Clandestine
by Nervemaster
Summary: A nameless boy emerging from a mysterious past filled with pain, an inevitable meeting with a guild, a story of concealed memories and unspoken words. The first five chapters are the prologue, and the sixth will introduce Fairy Tail into the story. It'll be long and complicated, yet everything will be resolved and explained in the end, though the trip there will be dark.
1. Liminoid Illumina

**I do not own Fairy Tail, not any of the characters in it.**

**Disclaimer: There will not be any Fairy Tail in the Liminoid Illumina Arc. It is only there as a way to understand the OC that most of the story will be focusing on. It is not necessary for one to read it, however it does allow one to get insight in the character as a person, though if you're not interested you can skip these five chapters, even though it's not advised, and still enjoy the actual meat of the story, as this serves as nothing more than a form of prologue (A 25000 words long prologue, but still nevertheless a prologue)**

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_Guttersnipe; A member of the lowest social class, often refers to street urchins._

He could feel the warmth of the sun slowly creep onto his skin, forcing the cold air to dissipate. He tightly hugged the ragged cloth he had wrapped himself in, in order to stay warm through the night. A strong smell hit his nostrils like a wave of air, though the smell was anything but fresh. It was the smell of rotten food, of some indescribable substance that made his nose wrinkle. He slowly opened his eyes and saw a stray beam of light, penetrating through a tiny crack in the little shelter made out of boxes and whatever was lying around. He rubbed his eyes with his hands, trying to remove all of the gound that had built up over the night. He blinked rapidly, now able to focus his eyes properly. He was staring straight into a wooden box, with the credentials _Delroge Shipment _imprinted into the wood. He could barely make that out at this point, though as he gradually started to return to consciousness, his eyes started to see the inside of his little shelter. Not that there was much to look at, however it was still better than what he had grown accustom to over the past few years. It had only been recently he had been able to scrounge enough materials together in order to create this... home.

He sat up and while doing so, he quickly realized how much his back hurt from sleeping on the uneven ground. He yawned heavily, stretching his arms forward as that was the only way to do so without knocking anything over. He looked around for a little while for no particular reason at all. He fixated on the little hole on the right side of him. He could barely make out what was outside, the only thing he was able to see was a beam of light passing through a large amount of dust and fumes, all coming from the trash beneath him. He pushed the cloth off of himself and placed it at the bottom of the shelter. He then turned around, lying flat on his belly. He began pushing himself forward, pushing aside a small metal plate that served as a door. The plate fell over and landed on top of a pipe and other things, making a loud, mostly metallic sound. The loud noise startled him briefly, though what was the most startling were the ominous clouds that hung above him. A very dark colour, threatening to release their downpour at any given time.

He crawled completely out of the boxes. It took a few moments for him to stand up, his weak legs taking their time to adjust to the new weight. He leaned against the boxes for a little while, he then pushed himself onto his legs, finally managing to support himself. He could begin to feel the hunger growing within himself. He quickly gazed around. He was all alone amidst a pile of trash, a quite large one at that. He was within a little valley of waste, with his home located right down the middle. Conveniently enough for him, the light of the early morning sun just reached over the trash and managed to cast a few beams onto his home. It was not because it was the warmth he was looking for, rather it was the point in time where he would wake up. It was the point in time where he could begin to move into the city again, scavenge whatever they thought of as waste and use it for himself. Maybe I could find a piece of bread today, he thought to himself, his world suddenly seeming a lot brighter that just a moment ago. He took one last look around himself, before he began to walk up the mountain of trash, barefooted. Carefully placing his feet, avoiding what broken glass and other sharp materials that were inevitably lying around somewhere beneath the filth.

He reached the top of the small hill. A view that never seized to amaze him was before him. The morning sun casting its light over the rooftops of Delroge. The chimneys had already started to pour out smoke, each leaving its own trail into the darkened skies. The clouds were covering most of the west, allowing for the sun to shine from its low angle onto the city. He looked at the point where the sky became cloud. He deduced he would have about an hour of sunlight before the sun was swallowed up by the darkness. He couldn't remember how many times he had stood in this exact spot, looking down at the streets of Delroge. Seeing people walk along the outskirts of the city, some throwing their waste into the landfill. As he was standing now, the city was just in front of him, the forest leading into the mountains to the left, and the ocean to his right. There was a quite long way into the city from the dump. It took maybe ten or fifteen minutes to reach the outskirts of the city. He could barely see the top of the cathedral from where he was standing. He heard a loud noise, as a person had just thrown a large sack of garbage into the rest of the trash. The sound threw him out of the daze, and his focus turned towards the sack. It was made out of what seemed to be quite expensive cloth, at least for his standards.

He began to make his way down the hill, moving towards the sack that was just thrown away. He reached the bottom of the pile rather quickly, considering how much effort he had to put in to avoid the hazardous materials lying around, especially considering he was barefooted. He crouched down next to the bag and inspected the cloth. It was certainly of some quality, better than the sack I'm using to sleep in now, he thought to himself, as he picked up the bag and began to loosen the string that was tying the opening together. He turned the sack upside down and watched as a mix of animal and fish bones dropped out, as well as some blood stained cloth and other unneeded things. A slight smirk made its way across his face. He found it quite funny how he seemed somehow unaffected by what could be something that must have reeked of rot. He noticed something peculiar though. Amongst all of the trash within the sack, there was a small book. The book looked quite worn-out. It must've served its purpose thoroughly before it was discarded, he figured. He picked up the book and looked at it. He opened the book and saw that it was a quite normal book, however the content seemed quite bleak, almost as if the ink would fade away as you read another word. It would simply disappear the next time it was read. Its final fulfilment of its creation, of its purpose. He closed the book again, though he didn't put it back. The book itself didn't look valuable, however there was a book-store in the city where they would take in any kind of book, as long as it was still readable. He figured that he would be able to buy some food if he exchanged it.

He rose up from the spot and began walking back over the hill, this time with a sack in one hand and a book in the other. When he got back to the shelter, he simply threw the sack into the hut, turned around and started to walk towards the city once more. It's a shame that I have to trade this book, he thought to himself. It wasn't everyday he had access to reading material. It was actually quite common for him to read a book before exchanging it, but today was somewhat special. There had been a food shortage in the city, so they were even more strict about giving food away, especially to people such as himself, and he wasn't going to turn to stealing, since that would only turn out for the worse, no matter how one twisted or turned it. If you get caught, you hurt yourself, if you don't, you hurt your unwilling benefactor. It was better to starve through the hard times, and then be careful during the easier times. Though lately, he hadn't been able to find anything and had to use whatever money he could get hold of to pay for sustenance. The last month or so had been exceptionally bad, however it seemed that it was maybe at a turning point. With the book in his hand, he made his way towards the city.

As he reached the city, he started walking faster, avoiding people as much as possible. He stopped when he was above an open manhole. The stench was quite bad, however the dump was worse, so it didn't affect him as much. He began climbing down the small hole, down into the sewers. It had been his daily routine since he moved to the dump to take this route. If he was lucky the local baths would be letting out some hot water today. He reached the bottom of the ladder. He stood on a little platform. At each end of the platform, there was a small passageway hugging the wall tightly, allowing the sewage to run through the other part of the tunnel. It was dark, though luckily for him there was always a stray torch lit down there, mostly because of problems with leakage and the rat infestation which had come to be a common issue. After walking through the sewer for a couple of minutes, he reached a pipe sticking out just above the passageway. A lot of somewhat clean water was rushing out of the pipe. He walked up to it and put his hand into the stream. He quickly withdrew it. It was cold. Frighteningly cold. He cursed his bad luck. He looked at the torrent for a little while. After standing there, idle, he carefully placed the book on the ground, and thereafter he began unclothing himself, carefully laying the clothes down next to the book. When all of his clothes were removed, he stepped into the torrent. The water crashed against his pale white skin with an incredible force almost knocking him out of balance, though grabbing onto the pipe was enough to keep him from falling into the sewage.

After five minutes he stepped out of the torrent. His body was shivering, though it felt fresh. Even if the sewage stench would still remain on his clothes, at least he, himself was not as filthy. He began to take his clothes on. They stuck to his skin tightly, it almost felt as if he was taking on rubber. Yet he wasn't. He took the rest of his rags on and turned back to the water. He stuck his finger inside of the torrent and began brushing his teeth using his finger as the brush. After he was done he took on his clothes again, picked up the book, moved to the nearest ladder and then he returned back to the surface.

He got up from the hole in a back alley. It was filled with even more trash, presumably to be taken to the dump in the near future. He went out of the alley and into the main street, where a large stream of people surged by. So many faces, so few names. He began walking with the stream, towards the centre of the city. In the midst of all the residential houses lied a massive cathedral. He had once attended a sermon there, however he quickly abandoned the idea. He couldn't stand the thought of anything divine existing, especially not one who was praised for his kind-heartedness. Granted it did provide him with shelter from the cold, but he would rather continue feeling the cold and getting used to it, in contrast to receive warmth and then be thrown out shortly after because you're not acceptable in a church... He had found it both amusing and sad when he had been thrown out of the cathedral. The person who needs the warmth of god the most was thrown out because he simply does not meet the standards of this divine being. And people still inexplicably follow these priests and bishops blindly, listening to their every word, absorbing the entity called god. He had almost reached the cathedral when he broke away from the stream and went into a little park. It was one of the only free spaces in the city which wasn't owned by a so called, outstanding citizen. He turned his head to the sky and deduced that it was around two hours from midday. The sun was nearing the cloud, soon it would be gone.

The book store opened at midday, so he still had some time to waste before he could go there. He found a bench and sat down on it, embracing the suns light. It was near the end of autumn, slowly approaching the winter. A chill was sent down his spine as the thought crossed his mind. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted something unusual. A tall man in a long, black coat walked into the park, briefly looking around before continuing through. It seemed as if the man had completely overlooked his entire existence as he passed by. As the man walked through the park, he spotted a little sack which had just fallen out of the man's coat. The man continued, seemingly unaware of the fact that he had dropped something. The man crossed the park and walked down one of the many streets surrounding the park. He sighed and stood up from the bench, walking over towards the little sack. He picked it up without much trouble, although the pouch was quite heavy. He couldn't control his curiosity, so he opened the bag and found that it was filled to the brim with gold coins. It might be that this amount would be able to pay for food for some months... no, months wasn't enough, maybe a year or two?

As he stood there, the sun disappeared beyond the clouds. The sudden lack of the sun woke him up from his shock. He shook his head and looked around. Maybe the man was still here. He turned towards the street that the man had walked down. He wasn't there. The streets had all nearly emptied, only a stray half-drunken man would walk on the tiles, as the rest were all sitting quietly in the cathedral listening to the prayers. I might as well go to the book store and look for that man on the way there he thought. Luckily the man had walked in the general direction of the book-store, so maybe he was headed there too?

He walked down the empty streets. Now with all the people gone, he came to realize that the dump was actually quite alike. The ground was filled with filth, the stone tiles were almost completely covered by dirt, smut, and litter. There was also a lot of trash-bags, not only in the alleys between the houses, but also stacked outside of them, though it looked more like some residents of the apartments above had just thrown what they couldn't use out of the window, though in contrast to what was thrown in the dump, this was just rotten food and bones. As far as he could remember, the only clean spot in the city was either the parks, or the plaza around the cathedral, otherwise the whole city was just as filthy as the dump almost, especially because it was trapped beneath countless feet and houses. This caused the stench to be far worse than what it would normally be, however when you walked amongst the crowds, it wasn't as as easily noticeable compared to how it was when you were alone. Today was actually one of the few rare occasions when he had practically all of the city for himself, as he would normally seek refuge in the forest nearby during the day, as the city wasn't really the most hospitable place, he found the forest to be much more serene. The parks had some of that, however the noise city still overflowed in the park, whereas the sound of the nature flowed freely in the forest. Listening to the birds chirp always brought a sense of calmness over his mind, whereas the city only brought headache.

He turned a corner and heard a loud voice further down the street. The words were to him, unintelligible, though he could recognize the tone. It was a frantic attempt to forcefully make someone else view something as you do yourself, though already having acknowledged the persons inferiority and therefore his lack of understanding. Something he had been exposed to quite a lot during his early life. Though those memories were of the past, and they needn't and shouldn't be disturbed. As he slowly approached he could begin to make out what the voice was saying. It was coming from around the corner. As he turned the corner, the voice burst out once more.

"I'm telling you! GOD, IS, DEAD!" the voice yelled stoutly. He could now see that it was the man with the black-cloak that had dropped the money whom stood in front of a city guard. The city guard was wearing the normal leather outfit, with the symbol of the city engraved in the chest-piece, a bird in front of the sun. He was equipped with a short-sword, and a shield with the crest of the church on it. The guard looked quite dissatisfied with the cloaked man, however the man seemed unaffected by what seemed to be unjust scorn.

"I don't know how many times I have to explain this to you before you can begin to fathom the concepts of which I'm speaking. However, regardless of your comprehension, when I conceived the thought of a dead god, the one you pray to seized to exist in that instant, leaving nothing behind but a jaded image of what once was, and what could never come again. For you to propose that I pray to this undying mirage, I can do nothing but reject you, in spite of your own beliefs, because of your own beliefs. So would you please go away, as we would never reach a consensus limited by your intelligence," the man said, rather coldly towards the guard. At first it surprised him what words the man was saying, and especially considering to whom he was speaking to. The guards in the city had been picked by the church, and they were known to be notorious supporters of obligatory sermon attendance, however for someone to say something like that, not only in the presence of, but directly towards a guard is nothing short of madness.

"Seize your heresy at once, or you will be taken to the gallows for blasphemy!" the guard shouted back at him.

"I will seize what you call heresy, when you seize your attempt to control me," the man retorted briefly.

You could feel the guards irritation, burning, seething within him. It was quite obvious that he was nearing a breaking-point, however the man seemed unaffected by this. The man sighed at the guard, which seemed to push the guard over the edge. The guard reached for his sword whilst grunting angrily at the man. All the man did was point in the vague direction of the spectator who had been observing the conversation with his head around the corner, however he had stepped out and was now completely visible to both of them. The guard quickly looked at him and shouted, "You stay right there!" The guard immediately began sprinting towards the spectator, who quickly realized his predicament and turned around and ran away. The man in the cloak readjusted his hood as he went the opposite way, away from the guard.

"Stop running!" the guard shouted at him. He was somehow managing to not get caught by the guard. His malnourished body was barely hanging on at this point, but it seemed that the guard's armour weighed him down just enough so that he couldn't catch him. It wasn't common for him to be chased in this fashion, however the possibility still remained. It had been quite a while since he could walk through the streets without the looming fear of being taken to what they called a 'Correctional Facility'. He didn't know exactly what they did there, but anyone he had ever known, which for the record wasn't many, had never returned from it. They had simply disappeared from the surface of the earth. But right now there was no time to think about that.

The chase continued for around three minutes before he ran into an alleyway. He jumped into a pile of trash before the guard turned the corner. He covered himself quickly with the trash, and tried to calm his breath as much as he could. The guard turned the corner and ran down the alley. He held his breath as he heard the guard approach him. The guard continued past him, the footsteps slowly becoming more faint, and then they vanished. He allowed himself to breath again. He gasped for air, though the air he was inhaling was foul. He pushed himself out of the trash and took another breath. Only now it struck him. It was the first time he had actually been actively chased without being reported by a citizen. The guard had flat out chased him by the mere sight of him... something definitely wasn't right.

He walked out of the alley and went to the book-store, and whilst doing so making sure to avoid any more guards. Just as he was approaching the street the store was on, the bell-tower rang and the gates of the cathedral opened. He couldn't see it, but it was the usual procedure. It signified it was midday. He arrived at the street with the store. It was an one-way street and at the bottom of it, the store was located. The street itself much resembled one of the small alleyways, completely overshadowed by the houses at it sides, leaving the street covered in a state of perpetual darkness. He went down the street. Surprisingly enough the store was open, which suggested that the shopkeeper hadn't attended sermon... Can't be good for business he figured as he went inside the door.

The store was cramped, not with people, but with bookshelves. There was only one person as far as he could see in the store, and that was the clerk behind the desk. He could, however, hear a set of footsteps somewhere within the shelves. He chose to disregard them, there was no way a guard would go into this store, unless if ordered to ransack it which actually was fairly common. They would search stores at random, looking for blasphemes texts and scrolls. If something was found denouncing their beliefs, the store would be burned and the owner would be hanged. Sometimes they would be taken to the guillotine for a more public execution, and it usually attracted quite the crowd.

He walked up to the clerk. "I'd like to trade in this book," he said, placing the little book on the counter.

The clerk picked up the book and looked at the front cover with slight confusion. He then opened the book and narrowed his eyebrows. "There ain't no words in this book," the clerk said.

"What do you mean there's no words?" he said, grabbing the book out of the clerk's hands and looking at the pages. They were still covered with the same fragile words as the last time he had looked into it. "See?" he said, showing the page to the clerk.

"No, I don't. There ain't no words in that book," the clerk said persistently.

"This isn't funny."

"I ain't trying to be funny, there ain't no words in that book. We ain't gonna be exchanging empty diaries, only the written works."

"But... this is?"

"That's the Liminoid Illumina," a third voice said from behind. He turned around quickly and saw the man with the dark hood stand behind him, however he had taken the hood off, revealing his face. He had short dark-brown hair, a very clean face and green eyes. He looked to be in his late-twenties, early-thirties.

"The what?" the clerk said.

"Liminoid Illumina," he repeated. "I have personal interest in this book, so if you don't mind I'd like to have a chat with you," the man said towards him, with a tone suggesting he should present himself.

He avoided the question and answered. "Okay... we can talk over there.. I guess?" he said, pointing towards a little alcove in the shop. The alcove was normally used for people to read, however it would do.

The man frowned slightly at the lack of a presentation, despite that he complied and walked over. He was right behind the man. The clerk had receded into the back-hall, probably taking a break since there were no other customers present, nor were there going to be any presuming that nothing out of the usual happened, which it didn't. Well, at least not for the shop.

They sat down together around a small wooden table. He placed the book in between them.

"I think it's appropriate for us to exchange names, if we are to proceed. Some might even say that it is essential even," the man said.

"You start then," he responded.

The man sighed once more, obviously tired of his avoiding the question. "Fine, have it your way. My name is Chraiot Chrynsta of the Western Plains. Do you want to know any of my titles as well?" he said sarcastically.

He began fidgeting in his place a little, as Chraiot stared at him. "Well, your turn?"

He remained silent, however it felt like his resistance was being hammered down by his penetrating gaze. "Well... the thing is that I don't really... you know... I don't have a name..." he finally said.

"Oh, is that all?"

"Wha...?" he managed to stutter out. It caught him completely by surprise how little he cared about the fact that he didn't have a name. The normal reaction would be some form of cold-hearted sympathy, however this one really did not seem to give a damn...

"You see, there is this thing within out society that we put an emphasis on identity, however we only put emphasis on the arbitrary part which is the name, rather than who you are. I could call you any name right now, and it would be just as good as the next one, but if you really want a name, I'll figure something out for you, even if it's only temporary... granted everything is temporary though that is none of your concern right now," Chraiot said, smiling at the last remark.

He just sat there, stunned, silenced. He simply didn't know what to say. Truth be told, it wasn't common for him to speak with other people, but he was able to have a proper conversation with most normal people, but this? It was just too absurd, but even so, it wasn't like he didn't enjoy the conversation, on the contrary, it felt quite good in contrast to all his other experiences, however it was still uncommon for him.

"Ah, I'm sorry for going on a tangent," he said, still smiling. "Anyhow, I'll just call you... lets see... You'll be... I'm really not good at making names, but how do you feel about Galvian, or in short, Galv?"

He sat there for a little while, thinking. A smirk crossed his face as a response popped into his head. "It doesn't really matter, since, as you said, it's arbitrary, so whether or not I like it is irrelevant. The real question is if I can get used to it, and that is something that remains to be seen, however I think that it could grow on me," he said, feeling quite satisfied with himself.

"Good, good, excellent. I doubt that you would've been able to give me a more satisfying answer, would you, Galvian?" he said, his smile widening ever so slightly.

"That depends which answer you believe to be the best," the newly formed identity said.

"Anyway, lets get back to business. About this book of yours," he said, poking the cover. "As you may or may not have assumed already, this book is not like any other book you've encountered up until now... I presume. This book is called Liminoid Illumina. The literal 'translation' of the title is that it's a book restricted by social class, and it sheds light on something. Personally, I've not been able to read this book, since the book is actually imbued with magic. The purpose of this magic is to hide the words of this book from prying eyes, namely the churches. Therefore people of the lower-social classes are the only ones who are able to read this. How the book distinguishes low from high is beyond me, but I can only presume it has something to do with ones own greed and gluttony, as they are normally lower in people of lower social classes, such as yourself" he finished the last remark by gesturing towards Galvian's appearance.

"I haven't been able to access it, and even if I did, I doubt I would be able to read it, as the words for me are not visible, however, you are able to see them. I've only heard rumours of the contents of this book, and it is one of my first times seeing one, as there are only a few in circulation. It is beyond me why you are in possession of it, however I feel as if it's a good chance to receive some information about what the book says. That's where you come in. You are able to read the book, so what I would ask you to do, is read some of it and then meet me in an apartment just above town-square tomorrow just before church starts. Are you fine with that?" he said. His face was showing every ounce of seriousness it could, the smile long gone.

"Well, I was going to hand this book in fo-..." He stopped mid-sentence. A little pouch in his pocket had leaped into his mind. He stuck his hand down and fetched it, putting it carefully on the table. "I think you dropped this earlier in the park... I picked it up, so I cou-" "It's fine, you don't have to explain," Chraiot said, interrupting him. He dragged the pouch over to himself and stuck his hand down, taking a piece of gold up. He slid it across the table to Galvian. "Buy some food, a candle and something to light a fire with," he said, standing up from the table.

He placed a little note on it and grabbed the pouch and placed it into his pocket. "Meet me at that address tomorrow," he said, tabbing the little scrap of paper.

"Uh.. okay... was nice meeting you?" Galvian said.

"Sure, you too," the man said, pulling up his hood and heading out the door. Galvian stood up as well, taking the note and the gold coin. The clerk poked his head out from the back-room. He saw that no one new had come in, so he returned to whatever he was doing back there. Galvian decided to leave the store as well. Now that he had money for food, he really couldn't care less about handing the book in, and especially not after what he had been told about it. He opened the book and looked at the words once more. They were as fragile as ever, though now they seemed to be stronger, maybe because they received a purpose? He shrugged, what would he know about magic he thought to himself as he headed out into the street.

He had quickly found a vendor selling both candles and matches, granted the merchant did send some weird eyes as he saw the gold coin Galvian had to use for payment. Almost reluctantly had the merchant accepted it, obviously presuming it was stolen goods. He decided that a loaf bread would have to do for food, as he did not want to waste all of the money he had just acquired. Granted, it did look like more money was coming, but that was just a presumption. After having bought all of the necessary items, he began wandering back to his little shelter. Somewhere along the way, rain had started to pour down, however refreshing it might have been, it was still penetrating his thin clothes, soaking him with the very cold water. As a side-effect of the water, the mountains of trash had grown slippery, so he had to be even more careful going back up. He nearly fell a couple of times, but he somehow managed to overcome that obstacle standing on his two feet. He walked down into the valley of trash. His little home was still intact, and it seemed as if the water hadn't broken through his ceiling.

He removed the iron plate and crawled back into the boxes from whence he came. He closed the door again and placed the various items beside him in the cramped area. He ate the bread rather quickly, briefly enjoying the taste of food which he had missed quite a lot. He then lit the candle, placed the book down and opened it. He began reading as the rain continued its never-ending siege, attempting to penetrate the roof through the smallest of cracks, but to no avail. The only thing the rain caused was the sound. The constant clash between the ground and the rain. Between the heaven and the earth. Between the tears of gods and the strength of man.

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**Author Notes: So yeah. This is... well, yeah, what is it? It's a story inspired quite a lot by different things, anyway, the question on your mind will probably be "But Nerve, how does this story fit into the Fairy Tail universe!?" and my answer to that is, wait. It should become more clear in the next chapter, when that will come out, I do not know, but reviewing will always make things go faster. Regardless of reviews and such, I really feel motivated to write this, and I believe that it shows great potential, and the story which I'm planning to create is a vast one, extending itself throughout cities, countries, maybe even continents if I get a bit frisky. Either way, I hope you enjoyed the first chapter, and if you did, please leave a review, and if you didn't, please leave a review telling me why you didn't. Have a nice day, and things like that. Any answers you may have will probably resolved later, so stay tuned.**


	2. Liminoid Illumina: Opened

**I do in fact not own Fairy Tail (who would've thought)**

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_Overview_

_There are a lot of factors that helped shape the country in which you live in currently. Within this book, you will find answers to the questions that were previously unknown. There are four main events which you need to familiarize yourself with in order to fully comprehend the topics of discussion, therefore I included a brief overview of the events. Due note that the most recent of these events, The Eradication, is so recent that the full implications still remain largely unknown, as the aftermath is still raging through society as we know it. The full list of events which will be covered are; The First Great War, The Second Great War, The Rebellion and The Eradication. I will now start chronologically going through each of these, starting at the beginning. _

_The First Great War._

_The First Great War erupted around 200 years ago. It started because of a dispute between two countries over which of the nations would be given a highly contested island. The dispute spiraled out of control quickly, with many nations choosing sides, eventually encompassing all of the known world, without a single nation being safe from the war. The war raged at the intersection between the two nations which started the war in the first place. There were many other battlefronts, however all of those were only a means of drawing attention away from the main one, as that front-line never moved, as both sides were fortified on each side of the border. To cross into the enemies territory was practically suicide, however the generals disregarded the sanctity of human life and sent countless soldiers to their deaths, mainly because they failed to adapt to the situation. _

_The war continued for around 7 to 8 years, the exact dates have faded into history a long time ago. The total death count neared 30 million, at the time near 20% of all of the known worlds population. There were no victors, however the nations finally realized, after countless losses that they got nothing out of the war._

_The Second Great War._

_The original instigators of the war dissolved, and their territories striped away and taken by the contributors. This will lead us into The Second Great War. The tension caused between the new territories resulted in the second war, merely thirty years after the first. Only a few of the countries had been able to recover at this point in time, as the lack of manpower had significantly crippled practically every economy in the world. The war didn't start because of the tension, however it significantly increased the chances of outbreak. _

_The spark that ignited the fire was the alliance between two countries. Most of the world saw this fusion as a massive threat, as they would be a super power capable of dominating all other nations in every respect, economically and in regards of militarization The prospect of such a nation 'forced' the other nations to take a stand and join as one against this new threat. This sign of hostility started the war, merely 40 years after the outbreak of The First Great War. The two old countries which had seized to exist now formed the new battlefront. Two entire countries wrapped in war. Even though at first it looked grim for the two lone nations, the emergence of magic changed the course of the war greatly. As these human weapons entered the battlefield, the losses from the opposing side began to increase exponentially. That was the first time magic had been used, and it was for the purpose of destruction. The war ended soon after the magi joined the fray. It was a complete and total victory, and the only cause of this was the wizards that had annihilated the opposition. _

_The estimated length of that war was around two years, however the total death count reached around 45 million, 35% of the worlds total population at the time. 30 million of those deaths occurred within the last month of the war, when magic was used for a tool of destruction. This month was to be known as the Month of Terror, however it is referred to as the Month of True Victory in the society we live in today, as we were on the victorious side. _

_The Rebellion_

_In the war there were only five wizards, however their power alone was enough to bring nations to their knees. They were known as the Great Five. This leads us to the next large event, The Rebellion. Before describing the events of The Rebellion, we need to get an image of how the world looked just before. The whole world was under one ruling king, however the conquered provinces were not obedient. Some of the provinces were completely annihilated, some were left alone, but when the last of the Great Five died, the individual nations all stood up as one and tried to overthrow the Monarchy, however the Monarchy was not without an army, nor were they without wizards, however the other side had acquired magi of their own this time around. _

_This was around sixty years after the Second Great War. This war lasted for nearly 10 years, as both sides were very wary of the power looming within the magi on both sides. Only 5 million died in this war. The losses were significantly lower due to the many stalemates that would occur. If one side rushed in they would get slaughtered. In that respect, they learnt something from the first war where they sacrificed everything for nothing, however it wasn't the same this time. In the end, the stalling technique worked out better for The Rebellion as their territory far surpassed the amount of the Monarchy. _

_At the end of the war, the monarchist side were starving and quickly losing morale, allowing for the rebels to quickly swoop in and take over the capital, signalling the victory of the rebels. There is something important you need to know in order to understand the next event. Whilst there was only one nation, this nation had a church and that church spread itself throughout the nation, surprisingly being accepted by all. As time went on the churches influence increased at a rapid rate and the opposition swindled away. _

_When the rebellion ended, the church managed to get itself incorporated into every single nation, some more than others. One of the few countries whom managed to avoid the churches corruption was our neighboring country, Fiore. It is quite possible that the prosperity created by its location, and also the fact that they had lost the least in the war, The Second Great War and the Rebellion. Maybe they didn't need the church, maybe the church didn't want Fiore, I do not know to this date, I can only imagine. Regardless, with the end of The Rebellion almost all of the former nations were re-established, of course with several changes in regards to territory, but the world map looked much the same. _

_The Eradication_

_This is the most important event which we will be dealing with. It has other names, such as The Great Purge, however using the word purge suggests that something was contaminated, which I believe is not the case. The Eradication was a church instigated 'cleansing' of all the countries in which the church had sufficient influence, which in this case was all but one. It happened around It was mostly targeting the 'heretics', however they weren't the only targets. The lowest-social class, the ones barely managing to survive in the cities were targeted and annihilated. _

_The total death count remains unknown to this day, however its estimation is around 240 million, most of which remain unaccounted for, as they were literally no one. This is around 95% of all the humans within all of the nations. This event started 70 years after the Rebellion, only 20 years ago. The death toll seems large, yes, but that is also counting the number of people who lost their lives to the church, and no, not in death, but in life. I will explain this in further detail later on. This crusade lasted for almost 16 years, ending 'only' a couple of years ago. _

_The method of which they exterminated the 'heathens' were public executions, primarily by the use of hanging or guillotine for the ones who had a higher status in society. The ones such as yourself were hanged by the millions at the gallows for several years, though later on they simply skipped the execution and trial and simply killed them on sight. Granted the trials were only for show and no one was deemed innocent, anyone who was being prosecuted died. At one point, a trial only took a minute because there were so many that they simply did not have time to handle all of them, so the church suggested that they could simply deal with the matters without the courts involvement. The church was the law at this time, however in order to preserve public opinion, it needed consent from the court in order to exterminate what they saw as vile vermin. _

_For almost two years the streets of the world flowed red with blood. The streets were painted by the blood of innocents. That is when I was convinced that this book needed to be written. Regardless, this signaled the end of the Eradication, as the church had free reign to slaughter in the name of their god. It ended with the 'disappearance' of the churches enemies, however some still remain, though those are either of considerable influence and political value and the church simply cannot touch them because of their social status, and the others ones, the ones who managed to avoid the eye of the crusaders and somehow persisted through the crusade and through life after as well. _

_I hope that you now have a better image of the past. A past filled with pointless loss, an unfathomable amount of death, destruction beyond comprehension, corruption taking its roots and eventually the last and greatest loss of life in the history of man. Up until now, every single book that contained the 'truth' about what happened has been burned or archived by the church, leaving the general public with no other alternative to what the church is telling them. It is necessary for you to understand the past in order to understand the present and then ultimately the future. It is about time that we progress onward. We will now be heading into the consequences and how each specific event affected society. If at this point you're wondering why this book was written and what its purpose is, continue, as everything will make sense in the end._

_Consequences of War_

_Before The First Great War, governments or monarchies simply didn't exist. The world was made out of tribes, and these tribes formed larger countries. The countries were separated by natural borders, language and culture. There was no real way to distinctly separate one country from another. It was just before the emergence of war that the first two monarchies were established, those two were the ones whom instigated the war. _

_The dispute originally came up when they were discussing borders and territorial lines, and as you know, that lead to The First Great War. As the war began, the 'countries' around the two monarchies followed suit and founded a stable government, and soon after that, they saw that they could benefit greatly from winning the war, so they joined. What they didn't realize was the fact that they could, and would, lose even more if they lost the war. The two that started the war had already had some minor disputes, hence the fortification of the borders were necessary and already in place before the war erupted. _

_The First Great War_

_After The First Great War, society had changed. There was a distinct lack of farmers, as most of the men whom had been drafted to war were rural residents and farmers. The reason for the relatively long length of the war was due to lack of proper transport. People had to manually walk from their own home towns to the front-lines. This could take from either a month, to almost a year as some areas were harder to traverse than others. It was not uncommon for the troops that had been sent away, that a quarter of them had died under the travel to the battlefront. _

_After the war the lack of proper transportation became quite apparent, and research into other viable methods of transportation was started and finished shortly before The Second Great War. In regards to how society changed, a new social class was formed after the war. The noblemen was a new-born race, emerging from benefits from the king. The ones who received this status was normally the ones that had contributed in the war by sending troops and supplies. Nations were also formed, all of them monarchies. The royal line stemmed from the leader of the war from each respective country. All of the nations were highly militaristic because of this, which spurred the next war as well, as their children that carried on the 'royal' line also shared some of the same attributes. _

_In regards to the territorial changes, not a lot changed. The new territory they gained was deserted and practically unusable. However, what the new territories managed to do was create tension, as the a lot of countries were now bordering each other, and the maps were still largely contested, as several people wanted more than others, that almost excluded the possibility of peace. At that time no one had a proper justification for going to war, hence the 'long' lasting peace. As we approach the eruption of The Second Great War, some countries had become quite well organized, and their infrastructure far superior to 33 years ago. _

_The two most powerful nations were the ones who banded together, lying next to each other and their vast population allowed them to do so. The rest of the nations saw this as a hostile act, as this new nation would be able to conquer any country that it chose to go up against. Given those premises, the rest of the nations all banded together against those two, creating an ultimatum seeking disarmament and for them to shed some territory to neighboring nations and destroy some of their infrastructure. The new nation denied all of the requests of the ultimatum and then war broke out. What happened during the war you should know by now. _

_The Second Great War_

_After the emergence of magi in the war, the world changed drastically. With the totally victory of one nation over all else, the world 'joined' under one banner. Each of the great wizards got a land over which they could rule, however they still had to answer to the king. They were known for being monsters during the war, however in the aftermath they revealed themselves to have a humane side, something that was previously unheard of. They did not indulge in the vast wealth of the countries for their own benefit, nor did they impose taxes such as the king did. _

_As the king grew fatter and more corrupt, thoughts of rebellion began to sprout from the younger generation, further spurred on by the survivors of the war. However, one thing was certain, The Great Five were undoubtedly on the kings side and as long as they remained alive, rebelling would be suicide. So they waited. The younger generation grew older, a new one arrived and the same ideas was brought to them as well, and then finally to the third generation after the war. During the third generation, the last of The Great Five died. _

_At that exact moment when the news was spread throughout the world, insurgence groups began sprouting up everywhere throughout the continent. These are the events that lead to the rebellion, however society changed greatly during those years. The noblemen grew in power and the middle and lower classes fell further down the hierarchy. In the midst of all this suppression, mercenary guilds began forming across the continent. They normally housed assassins but some were also specialized, only hiring magi in order to carry out the requested missions. _

_During these times, paranoia was at an all time high and the only way to rid oneself of all the fear was to remove whatever was causing it. As no official guards were stationed outside of the original nations boundaries, dealing with thieves bandits and other affairs was solely the guilds responsibility, given they had been paid for their intervention. Some even speculated that the guilds themselves were the causes of the thieves and bandits. Not long after their creation, they became the nobles watchdogs, and their reputation began to worsen as they were used to remove unwanted objects in society, mostly people who opposed the rule of the nobles, as the king did not have any real power in the outskirts of his 'own' country. _

_Even though I state that the nobles ruled, near the end of this period of 'peace', the church had begun planting its seeds in the fertile soil of the nearing rebellion. Back in the capital, the king had been reduced to nothing more of a figure and the real power was with the church. That period in time is much familiar to our society. The fact that the church helped bring down the king in order to ensure its own survival shows that it is a being of great intelligence, however you can also compare it to a leech. When eventually the king grew blind and deaf of the world around him, the church traveled to provinces far away from the capital in order to help the insurgence groups. _

_The period in between The Second Great War and The Rebellion showed humanity a lot of things, however the most important one is that one single government cannot successfully attempt to rule over such a large area with either an all-destroying weapon or propaganda. They allowed the generation that experienced the war to spread their ideologies to their children, and let those ideologies grow unrestricted. The church learned much from that, as can be seen in our current society. _

_The Rebellion_

_The period between The Rebellion and The Eradication was probably the most inconsequential of all the peace time periods. The only thing that changed was the name of the ruling power. From being solely built around one king, it was split up and then several kings were stationed all throughout the re-established nations. Power exchanged hands, but nothing really changed. Going from one monarchy to another, the population was somehow made to believe that the one taking over was better in every aspect, in contrast to what was before. _

_The noteworthy thing about this period is the fact that nothing really changed. One would presume that after such a huge scale rebellion that things would have changed, that society would have changed and that power would be more evenly distributed, but no. If anything, the gap between the social classes increased even further, as the nobility were once more given even more privileges in the new nations for the contribution in founding and creating the new nations. _

_One thing did change however, and that was the amount of protection the cities had, as well as other strategic positions. Bandits and thieves did not have free reign over the territories any more, and so the purpose of the mercenary guilds were forfeit, so as we head towards The Eradication, they began to disappear ever so slowly. _

_Throughout this era of the churches influence continued to corrupt most of the newly formed nations, though as I stated previously, Fiore was extraordinarily left to its own devices. For better or worse, that is for the future to decide, but nothing much happened until the the year before The Eradication. _

_The Eradication_

_The effects of this event are still largely unknown at this point, however I will attempt to decipher the now in order to unravel the future. There is also something that needs to be clarified. 95% of the worlds population did not die in the literal meaning of the word, however I will explain what I mean further on. Regardless, society as we know it now is rotten. There are several things that make it rotten, and I will be listing them. _

_First off, the lower social class was largely eradicated, the one sub-section of this class that managed to survive were the farmers. They are still essential as their purpose is to feed the middle and higher classes. Their lives are not important, but what they do is, however they are practically excluded from society. As they do not reside within the city they do not have a link to society, which is only the middle and upper class. It is indeed quite possible for people to generally deny the existence of farmers, some might not even know what the term means. For them, the church provides them with grains and wheat taken straight from gods hands. This is of course nothing short of brain washing, as they've obscured the truth in order to create a foundation of pure commitment to the church, as people generally believe that it would be impossible to receive any form of food if they disobeyed the church. _

_Generally that was the case as well, however they do not believe that one can make it for food for ones own benefit. The possibility of sowing seeds and harvesting crops simply do not exist within their minds, and even if they did, it would be buried beneath the rubble of what once was their soul, as it was shattered the moment they submitted to the churches words. So right now we live in a society filled with thoughtless zombies, all ignorant to the reality of the world and then the ones whose only purpose is to work. Thoughts beyond the church were shunned, however after The Eradication the nobility has managed to secure a place where individuality isn't brutally destroyed, however they must still remain within the boundaries of orthodoxy. _

_To some degree this era right now is fundamentally much the same as the period in between The Second Great War and The Rebellion, however the difference is that thoughts of rebellion simply do not exist, ideologies of freedom, liberty are also non-existent. By establishing the thoughts of total submission within the general populaces heads, they've managed to obtain what the regime after The Second Great War could not. They ruled through fear, by the use of The Great Five, but now the church does not rule through fear. The rule through necessity and fabricated love, sown into everyone by their own hands. _

_They needn't fear thoughts of revolution, as the only ones who are capable of thinking of such things are either confined or powerless. That is how the world works. That is the unavoidable truth which glares into the face of any thinker. In a world completely ruled by a church, where thoughts are controlled like crops, where the past is nothing more than a fabrication created by man, and where the future is exactly the same as the now, what are you to do? _

_Now you may pose the question, how does a church manage to control and change society in such a drastic way? It's actually quite simple. As death, disease and hunger spread throughout the countries, people turned to them and began to entrust their lives in the hands of a god. This action empowered the church, however also the absolute devotion by the king and the state-wide enforcement of its beliefs helped the corruption spread. As the corruption began to spread, society began to change little by little, but it was only when The Eradication was started, that society began to change into what we have today. _

_The past is now slowly being exchanged for things in favor of the church, the memories of people were being rewritten through constant repetition of false events through sermon. That is how the church managed to obscure the world. It is also how they managed to avoid rebellion against this oppressive system. As I'm sure I mentioned previously, the thoughts simply do not exist, hence they can't spread or manifest. There is something quite important that you would have to note, and that is a rebellion has to be fueled by the masses, so in order for the ideas to exist it cannot be within one sole person, but within a crowd of people, because if it is only one person, then it is just temporary thought of change and that thought can easily be destroyed through either death or replacement, both of which share a similar outcome. If you are killed, you seize to exist. If your thoughts are replaced, the person that you are, the individual whom conceived this complex thought also seized to exist, becoming nothing more than a brainless zombie. That is why I can say that so many people died during The Eradication. Their minds were replaced by the churches You. _

_The You is a persona created to benefit its creators in the most effective ways possible. The You also helps the church identify the ones who aren't, as The You only interacts with other You's, therefore the ones who does not abide by those rules become glaring obvious, and is easier for the church to dissect from society._

_As we approach the end of this section, there is something I'd like to include, as I see it quite befitting. It's an extract from a longer piece that was burned to ashes during The Eradication, that I still managed to hold on to. The thoughts behind this piece originated from an observer and spread quickly at first, but was soon found and exterminated like the rest of the texts that contained a negative view on the society that the church was trying to create._

_Parasitic persistence preventing preposterous perplexity_

_within vanity's vilified version of this_

_disdainful decadence discerning this dystopia_

_Self-governed sanity selfishly succumbing _

_the individuality encased in implausibility_

_Truth traversing tedious transgressions_

_of loathsome liars ludicrously_

_deceiving this destructive deity_

_Love losing legitimacy_

_hate hollowed happy hearts_

_greed gave generous gifts_

_deceit dwelling deep down the depths_

_of the human heart_

_Worrying words wearing withered_

_faces, façade flourishing fearless of the_

_beings bashful beckoning, borrowing bought beliefs_

_pretending precious parameters_

_Forceful faces frowning_

_abstract apathy amidst an atrocious act_

_of oscillating offensive offers, _

_suggesting self seclusion, solicitous souls suffering_

_righteous regression regarding repression_

_Perfect paradigms produced, pretending_

_ignorance in internal interference, _

_soulless sayings soothe sane souls, _

_enrolling endless eternities_

_and demoralizing destinies_

_The purpose and meaning of this piece is something for you to decide. I will not implant my thoughts in your head, as I would be doing just the same as the church, however I do realize that I'm writing something heavily biased towards the church, and for that I apologize. I find it impossible to conceal this hatred within me, and that is reflected in my text. Regardless, it's time for us to proceed onward, to the purpose and goal of the church._

He closed the book. The candle had almost burnt down and it was completely dark outside. The rain had subsided somewhere near half way through. His eyes were weary from reading and his head hurt slightly. Most of it had made sense, however some of the things ran around his head in circles. Especially that extract. He wasn't sure whether it was because he lacked comprehension, or if he was too tired to understand it, truthfully he did not really care. At that point, the only thing he really wanted was to sleep.

The past seemed so distant to him now, it always had, but now even more than usual. Even though he saw it clearer, it was moving away from him at an alarming rate. He shook his head. He pushed the book aside and turned around so he could lie on his back. He extinguished the candle and began to slowly fall asleep. 'Today had been quite something... I wonder what will happen tomorrow' were his last thoughts as he slowly faded away from consciousness and into a dream world, where the church didn't exist, where poverty was nothing but an illusion and where people were real. Sadly, it is only a dream.

* * *

**Author Notes: I feel a little bad about this. I mean, nothing really happens, it's just lore. Granted, I did try to include something that spiced it up a bit, and I hope you liked that, but alas, lore, I felt like it was necessary. Aaaaanyway, if regards to how this interacts with Fairy Tail, I hope you can now begin to draw a picture of how it's related. Also, due note that I do in fact realize that the time line seems weird, as people, such as Zeref (take originated 600+- years before the beginning of Fairy Tail) was not spoken of and I even explicitly stated that the first emergence of magic was 160 years before the current time line in the story. I do know of this, and I do plan to explain what the hell is going on, though I will do that through the story and not through these crappy author notes. Regardless, I hope you enjoyed this... well... 'book', lore thingie, whatever it is (I think it's something close to the book in 1984 (an awesome book which I've received some of my inspiration from) where there is also an occurrence where the main character reads... a book. I feel however that it's quite hard to suck someone in when there has been so little interaction with the world. I feel like just getting it done is good, and people can always just go back and look at it if you deem it necessary.**

**Anyway, I hope you enjoyed, and please leave a review if you want to.**


	3. Liminoid Illumina: Hunted

**I do not own Fairy Tail, which I'm quite unsatisfied with, but alas.**

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He opened his eyes instantly. There had just been a loud noise near his home. Said noise was then followed by a grunt and the sound of things falling over. He quickly turned around to lie on his belly and slowly pushed the iron plate. He wasn't sure what had made the noise, but through past-experience, he could deduce that nothing good would come to the landfill, nor would it make a sound like that. From what he could guess, it was just a guard checking the land-fill for some inexplicable reason, however the chase yesterday had instilled a form of paranoia within him. He carefully pushed the plate away, placing on the trash as quietly as possible.

He poked his head outside. At first he was unable to see anything, however as his eyes finally woke up completely and adjusted themselves to the outside, he saw that a guard was standing on the top of one of the hills, scouting the area. He seemed to be alone, however the sound that he heard came from another direction. 'There has to be more... which means that they are here for a reason. Are they after me?' he thought to himself as mild panic erupted within him.

He sneaked back in and grabbed the book. He then looked outside again. Seeing the guard facing the other way, he emerged completely from his shelter. Slowly and carefully he began making his way across the trash, away from the guard standing on the hill. 'I've got to get to the forest... I'll be able to lose them there,' he figured. He suddenly heard some footsteps near him. Very near. He quickly stopped and held his breath. He could not see the guard, but he could feel his looming gaze surveying the area very close by. He knew that if he stood up right now he would be caught, maybe even just the slightest movement would alert them of his presence.

The waiting continued and as the seconds slowly turned to minutes the guard began to move away from the spot, drawing closer to the other guard. He saw this as his chance as continued towards the outskirts of the dump. He continued onward in a moderate pace, but as he drew near the forest he began to speed up. Much to his dismay, he accidentally knocked over a metal rod. It fell down. He didn't know if it made a noise, he had already decided to leg it as fast as he could into the forest.

"He's over there!" he heard one of the guards yell behind him, but it was already too late for them. He was already well within range of the trees. It was only a matter of seconds now, though somewhere in is mind he could hear the sound of boots being violently crashed against rubble. He panicked but continued his escape attempt.

'I can't be caught now... I'm so close to getting away... I have to meet Chraiot in the town,' these thoughts spurred his feet as he ran. He crossed the boundary between trash and tree and fled into the forest. The usual tranquillity wasn't there, or maybe it was. He couldn't sense it, as his whole being was only focused on losing his pursuers. Now finally being able to throw all care away, as the damp forest grass replaced the rubble, he was able to run faster... Though it still didn't seem like it was enough. He could hear the footsteps slowly catch up to him, he could hear several voices now, not only two.

He knew that if he continued like this, he would get caught in a matter of minutes, so he changed his path. He began running towards the city. He was aiming for a sewage pipe in the forest. It was leaking its filth into the green landscape, but there wasn't time to think about that. If he was able to get into the sewers, he would probably have a better chance of eluding them. However, the risk of them being in the sewers still persisted, but at this point it was his only option. Being caught certainly wasn't one.

Initially he had managed to lead his followers astray, giving him around two minutes to increase the distance between them. Their footsteps slowly faded, though their voices still remained. As he gradually neared the city he began to slow down. He was heaving for air, his body simply wasn't able to run that far without pushing itself to its limits. But he knew if he slowed down any more than this, he would be caught and if that happened, nothing else mattered. Nothing.

He took a gander over his shoulder and at first he wasn't able to see anything, but as he took a second look, he saw silhouettes quite far behind him. He wasn't able to accurately pinpoint their location and the distance that was between him and them, but he could at least sigh in relief, not that he was actually able to do so, but he knew that he would be able to reach the sewage pipe before they caught up to him. What happened after that... well, the thought of something happening after that did not exist within his head.

He reached the sewage pipe. He could still hear the voices, but they were trailing further into the forest, something which had confused him greatly for a short while, but just because it didn't make any sense wouldn't mean that he would pass this opportunity up. He looked up at the sky. Only now did he first realize that it was covered in clouds, much like the that had been blocking the sky the day before. He wasn't able to tell what the time was, so he could only hope that he would arrive at the correct time. Whether he did or not was up for chance to decide. He averted his gaze from the skies and looked at the pipe. It was more or less just a continuation of the normal sewage pipe, however instead of leading into another pipe, it led into the forest.

He stepped up onto the pathway. He took one last look at the forest behind him as he walked into the darkness that was the sewer. Little by little the natural light faded away, being replaced by the occasional torch. As he made his way through the damp sewers he became aware of the excessive amount of sweat that had been pouring down his body ever since he had began running. He contemplated going to the water pipe, however he didn't want to go there. He could not be certain how much these guards knew about his daily routine, they found his home after all so they must know quite a bit. Granted, it is glaring obvious to anyone who follows him to find his home, however that would suggest that had been following him... but the guard yesterday clearly chased him at first sight which would suggest that they wouldn't follow but rather catch him at the first opportunity... It just didn't make sense to him, so he decided just to head straight for the manhole nearest the town-square.

He walked for a couple of minutes and found the hole which he presumed to be the one. Luckily for him it was. He entered the city in a back-alley, two blocks away from the town-square. He just had to walk fifty meters in the crowd of people and then enter a building and he would be there. 'Only fifty meters' he kept repeating to himself as he slowly approached the crowd of people. Before entering he took a look around, not that he was able to see anything as the crowd blocked his vision. Despite not knowing anything about the surroundings, he plunged into the stream. Bumping into people who quickly moved away from him, he quickly found himself in a bubble by himself. The stream had created a little circle in which he was the centre. He felt incredibly uncomfortable for those couple of seconds where this was the case. Not only was he being expelled from the stream because of him being filthy, but he was also a glaringly obvious target of... well anyone who happened to look in the vague direction of him. The faster he escaped that situation the better.

After a couple of seconds within the stream, he found himself in front of a rather ominous looking door. It was rather heavy-wooden door, covered in black paint. He tentatively reached for the door-knob. He rested his hand on it for a few second. He felt as if he was entering the gate to a new-life, leaving behind all the trash, the smut and the stinking sewage water for something else. He couldn't exactly pinpoint what it was, but hopefully it was sterilized. After that thought he turned the knob and embraced the change. Nothing really happened however, his past life wasn't over, all he managed to do was open a door, which he then ineptly stepped into.

He stepped into the hall. It had a staircase leading up to the next floors and doors leading into the individual rooms. It was painted a solid white which would suggest that poverty was only a dream within this household. It felt quite appropriate to him, however now wasn't really the time to be looking at decorations. As far as he could remember he had to go to the first room on the second floor. He went up the stairs and walked straight to the room numbered 201. He was met with another door, this one seeming even more consequential than the other. He was certain that entering this door would be the end of something and the beginning of something else. He stood there for a little while, calming his nerves. He wanted to be able to remember this completely arbitrary momentous moment.

As he finally managed to muster up the courage and strength to open the door, he heard a click and the door opened inwards. "What are you doing just standing there?" he heard a familiar voice saying from the inside.

"Ah... well... I was just making sure this was the right place," he lied. Chraiot whom had just emerged into his field of view gave him a sceptical look, however he still stood aside and invited him in.

"You're a bit early, _Galvian_," he noted. It sounded unnatural. Maybe it had also sounded that way. It was quite probable that his joy had clouded his judgement... but it was too late now. Being no-one or being _Galvian_, it didn't really matter to him.

"I was awoken a bit abruptly, so I decided to just come here as I would have nothing better to do," he said. He made sure to circumvent the fact that he had been chased half of the way here, as that would only lead to more questions, which he wasn't any fond of.

"It's fine that you come now, I was actually only waiting for you to arrive anyway," he said as he gestured towards two chairs facing a large window overlooking the town-square. The window was open and the casual buzzing of the stream was reaching them even there. The whole room was painted the same colour as the hallway outside, though the walls in this room were covered with paintings of dominant looking people, pictures of landscapes which he had never seen before and to crown it all, a picture of the bishop of the city, a man in his early fifties with several lumps of grey hair amongst his otherwise light-brown hair.

Of course the picture didn't show that. It showed a man standing in front of the churches crest. It was a black 'T' cross with a circle on top of it with a teal background. The rest of the room looked fairly plain. The only thing that stood out was the pictures and maybe glaring lack of furniture apart from the two chairs facing the square.

Chraiot walked over and sat down in the chair to the left, as _Galvian_ sat down in the other.

"Did you get to read some of the book?" he asked inquisitively.

"I read the first part of it," he responded, omitting the fact that he had forgotten half of it. He could remember the key point, how much that mattered he didn't really know.

"Ah, good, good," Chraiot said, now with a smile on his lips. A smile which for some reason _Galvian_ found hard to believe in, but he shrugged it off. It was probably just his paranoia that hadn't quite subsided yet.

"So... what now?" he dared to ask, breaking the short silence.

"What do they look like to you?" Chraiot asked, looking down at the square.

_Galvian _sat still for a little while, thinking. "If anything they look like ants," he said.

"Nothing more than ants, I see... Do you have the book?"

He nodded, raising his left hand showing off the book.

"Excellent, now sit still," Chraiot commanded as he rose from the chair, leaning towards me. He extended his hand, letting his fingers touch _Galvian's _forehead. He saw a short flash of light and in that instant, he felt as if something was being sucked out of him through his forehead. It was a strange feeling, unlike anything he'd experienced prior to this. He rapidly blinked his eyes, trying to make sense of what had just happened, but it didn't. So many things were a mystery... it was as if his entire world had been warped by unknown forces, covering up everything with a shroud of confusion.

Chraiot sat back down in his chair, his face now portraying a well-hidden frown, though there were some obvious cracks in his mask. His eyes were fixated on the ground, narrowed slightly.

"Is... something wrong?" he asked, slightly worried over Chraiot's unusual facial expressions.

"N-... no, it's nothing you need to concern yourself with," he replied, his mask seemingly recovering in an instant, the flawed smile returning once more. "Anyway, it should be time for the announcements to start," he said, gesturing towards the window, towards the town-square.

"What announcements," he asked, confused.

"You'll see." After that comment, silenced crept up on them and embraced them. The noise from the stream, from the lake of people in the square surrounded them, their footsteps, their voices. They were all gathering around a plateau in the middle of the square. It was a wooden platform with a podium on top of facing the masses and behind said podium, a guillotine was placed. It always sent a chill down his spine, the razor-sharp blade looming at the top of the structure, just waiting to be released so it could fulfil its purpose.

The sound of trumpets silenced the crowd instantly. It was almost refreshing, though the trumpets call was foreboding, signalling an imminent emergence of the bishop. The trumpets stopped as the bishop appeared from inside of the cathedral, the giant wooden doors opening slowly as he emerged into the town-square. He reached the podium and stood on top of it, standing over the crowd, looking down upon them.

"Fellow citizens, it warms my heart to see all of you kind people showing up here to listen to this old fool speak," the bishop started. His voice resounding stoutly within the crowd, filling their minds. It almost disgusted _Galvian_. It almost sounded like a serpents hiss, rather than a man's voice.

"On this fine day, we have some matters to take care of, and to do this, I would like to present the head of the guardsmen, our loyal protector, Invinci Renteps!" the bishop almost shouted to the masses as he stepped down from the podium, allowing another man in his late thirties to stand on I instead. His blonde hair probably his most outstanding feature and maybe his height, otherwise from what he could see, Invinci looked fairly regular.

"Greetings citizens, as the kind bishop stated, we have some matters to attend to. First off," he said as he reached down to his belt were a scroll of paper was attached. He took the scroll and folded it out for everyone to see. A face was imprinted on the scroll. At first it looked quite unfamiliar, but as he continued to look at it, it became more and more familiar. His heart skipped a beat as it hit him.

"This vermin has been infesting our city for too long! His stench has been disrupting our daily lives for the last time, so I beg of you all, if you see this rat, hand him in to the nearest guard!" Invinci shouted, his voice filled with hollow passion and a form of self-righteous fury. _Galvian_ just stood there, frozen, paralysed by the situation. His first thought was to run, but if he fled now they would catch him without doubt. The streets were empty, so a single person running would be noticed immediately, so his only choice was to stay where he was, close to Chraiot...

'Chraiot! He must have some way of getting me out of this' he thought. He turned to look at him, but found nothing more than a slight glance in his direction, otherwise he was completely fixated on to the speaker. He began shaking, desperately trying to calm down but to no avail. His mind was a complete mess filled countless escape routes leading to countless captures. He was stuck and in the midst of his desperation the speaker had started again.

Looking down at the plateau again, there was no a man strapped into the guillotine. He was familiar, though where he recognized the face from escaped him. "This man is a bandit who has been terrorizing this fair city for several years. We caught him recently and he is now to be put to justice for his actions!" Invinci shouted at the gathering and was met with a fierce response, demanding the immediate release of the blade. He could swear he saw a smirk on his face as he stepped down from the podium towards the guillotine.

He focused his eyes on the man soon to die, this proclaimed bandit and then it struck him. He knew where he had seen that man before. It was the guard that had been chasing him yesterday! But why would they kill one of their own, why would they make him out to be a bandit? Why? And why was he smiling in the face of death? Why was he crying tears of joy with a smile on his face as he lied there, with his head strapped into the guillotine, waiting for the steel to end him, waiting for the steel to end his existence as a man that wasn't him, end his life being known as a bandit, being known as a fabricated existence...

_Galvian_ was almost at the verge of crying for the man, but also for himself, because he had convinced himself that it was over. He was going to end up in the same situation... but the smile... The smile persisted even as the blade of the guillotine was released and raced down towards his neck. Within the blink of an eye, his being was removed from the world, and the bandit had replaced him. The head of the guardsmen stepped on top of the podium again, as the head of the guardsman fell down into a basket, his last facial expression still imprinted on his face.

The release of the blade and the removal of the head was met with an uproar of feelings, all of them resounding in the name of 'justice' and 'glory'. He now finally understood why they were dead. All of them, every single one. Not one speck of life could be found anywhere within the crowd, one as rotten as the other.

"I'm sorry..." he heard Chraiot say in a very melancholic tone. He turned his head quickly and looked at him. He was still staring at the guillotine, but something felt a bit off. That's when he heard it. A door being kicked in and the sound of countless footsteps going up the stairs. 'No... no that can't.. but,' his mind was being bombarded by thoughts, he couldn't keep control of anything. In the centre of all of this frustration and chaos, a single voice reigned supreme.

"I'm sorry. Sacrifices has to be made... I didn't have a choice," Chraiot said as he turned to face him, now smiling a sad but sincere smile, as his eyes peered straight into him.

"FOR WHAT?!" he shouted as the door was kicked in by a guard. He turned his head to the door, seeing several guards ready to flow into the room. In a split-second he decided. There was only one way out. He began running towards the windows on his right, the guards starting to yell amongst themselves, though he didn't care. It was all or nothing now, and if being killed while escaping was a chance, he did not care. Those were the thoughts running through his mind as he jumped out of the closed window on the second floor of the building.

He felt his body crash against the glass, breaking it easily though some of the pieces still stuck in his body. He couldn't feel any pain however. While falling down towards the ground he remembered something. The book was still in his hand... The book that had started all of it. He was close to throwing it away, but he couldn't. Why the book had popped into his mind now he did not know, it probably didn't matter anyway.

He hit the ground, his legs giving in to the weight of his accelerated body. He let out a cry of pain, but quickly managed to get back up and run towards the manhole which he had come from. He had only felt the pain of the impact, after that he felt nothing, nor did he think of anything. The pain had convinced him that this was no dream, nor was it a nightmare. It was reality, something far worse than either of those. Unavoidable, inescapable.

He didn't know if he was being chased as he turned the corner into the alley, he could only guess that he was. He didn't look back, his entire world only consisting on the path before him, a path so unstable that it might crumble at any moment, sending him falling down into the abyss that lies beneath. He ripped open the manhole's cover and almost jumped down the hole, grabbing onto the ladder before plummeting down in the darkness.

In the sewers he could hear their voice echo around him. They were everywhere, he was surrounded, he felt as if it didn't matter any more, everything was lost, he would be caught and then executed. His entire existence would be replaced and then reborn anew, into the very same being whose life he had just witness escape from this twisted world. He was heaving for air, his entire body was burning, his head was in a complete state of chaos, and yet he persisted. His legs denied him the comfort of rest, his ears denied him the comfort of ignorant safety, his mind denied him the comfort of stability and rest. And yet he persisted.

This wheezing husk of a person running through the filthy sewers, fleeing from the grasp of the authority. And why? He had never stolen, had never gotten in the way of anyone and yet he was being prosecuted as a monster. H doubted that they would even recognize him as human when he was caught. He shook his head... If he was caught.

As the chase continued he realized that he was actually drawing quite near to the pipe that led into the forest. He began smiling uncontrollably... 'I'm going to make it, I'm so close, just a bit further,' with these thoughts in his head he pushed himself further. He could begin to see the light coming from the end of the tunnel. His smile grew wider. He could see it, he could see the light.

As he reached the opening he realized something. It was raining. Had it started to rain before or after he had entered the sewers... how long had he been running anyway? He pushed those thoughts aside. He was out. He was free.

"Where do you think you're going?" he heard a voice say from the forest. In that moment he saw six guards step out from the trees, all looking at him with a faint, sadistic smile upon their lips. He turned around quickly... 'If I can get back and hide in the city... or maybe get away through the streets,' he thought as a last desperate attempt to escape. He couldn't allow himself to be captured... he just couldn't... he turned around and ran back into the sewers. He slammed head-first into a rather large person, knocking him down.

"End of the line," he heard the man say, or something along those lines. He couldn't hear anything, nor hear or see. He wished himself from the outside world. He wasn't there any more. This was just a dream, of course, it had to be. Nothing more than a bad dream... But the pain... he just realized the pain. It was coming from his leg primarily, however everything hurt. Especially his head. He looked back up at all of them, all of their faces looking exactly like the other, all wearing self-gratifying smiles.

He tightly clenched his fist, the book still firmly placed in it. The book... maybe it could help. Chraiot said something about it being imbued with magic. He raised his hand and tried to open the book, but as he did he felt something hit his back head, and after that there wasn't nothing but darkness.

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**Author Notes: And that was that chapter. I'm quite satisfied with it myself, and I definitely think that the next one will be even better... well, it depends on what you want. Anyway, I hope ya'll enjoyed, and in regards to the first emergence of magic, it was during the second great war, which was 40 years after the beginning of the first, which is 200-40=160 and then on the second year so it would be 158 years in the past. Anyway, that's about it, hope ya'll enjoyed and so on and so forth. Leave a review if you want to, etc, hope you had a nice Winter Solstice and I wish you a happy new year.**


	4. Liminoid Illumina: Broken

**I do not own Fairy Tail (granted there is nothing related to Fairy Tail just yet, but still...)**

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His head hurt.

It felt as if it was being constantly bombarded with countless sound waves, crashing him beneath an immeasurable volume. The noise resounded within his head, never leaving him with a second of peace. At this point he was not sure whether he was actually still alive or if he was dead. It didn't matter to him anyway, as he saw himself shifting from being dead and alive, breathing and not breathing.

It was only when a blinding light pierced his closed eyes that he regained what he believed to be life, however he quickly remembered where he was, or rather, where he wasn't. He did not know where he were, all he knew was that it would be the end of him. 'Maybe the door had meaning,' he thought to himself, as he slowly became more aware of his surroundings. Not through vision however, as he suspected what would happen if he opened his eyes would be unpleasant to say the least.

His different body parts were starting to wake up, and as they did he could feel nothing but numbness. He slowly tried to move one of his arms, but found himself unable to do so. He then tried with one of his fingers, but to no avail. It was as if his body wasn't his own, as if his physical entity had been possessed by some sort of ghost. The very notion was laughable, but the situation was real. Too real...

Nothing happened for a while. He could feel nothing but numbness, the only sensory input that wasn't obstructed was the blinding light. Light, something that he had grown to appreciate, something that kept him warm through the darker times now felt a strange animosity towards it. 'Maybe it's because I've my eyes closed,' he thought to himself, slowly raising one of his eye lids. He would soon come to regret that decision as an even greater whiteness burned itself into his eye. He flinched, though he felt no pain. The numbness managed to far surpass the supposed pain that he could only imagine.

"Can you hear me?" a voice said from every direction. He sat still for a while, unsure of what to do. He managed to nod his head ever so slightly.

"What is your name?" the voice asked. He almost became angry at that question. They would know very well who he was... They would know exactly why he would not be able to answer that question. A name popped into his mind, but was quickly suppressed. He figured that his silence would be good enough for them. If what he presumed was correct, they tortured people before killing them, so not answering would be an adequate response.

That was what he believed until the question came up again. "What is your name," the voice said again, exactly as it had before. Not even the slightest hint of emotion was present within the voice, which he would have assumed would be there, either joy over him not answering or impatience over him not answering. But there was only the stoic voice asking, yet again, "What is your name?"

The name that had popped up before resurged again, this time escaping his lips before he was able to suppress it.

"_Galvian," _he said with a cold distance from the name, which he had grown to despise over the short time of him being handed out to the church by -_that-_ man. Just the thought of him sent a feeling through him, a feeling that had been uncommon to him before now. Disgust, contempt. He truthfully had begun to loathe him. It was a feeling much stronger compared to his feeling towards the church. The betrayal had hurt more than the chase. He was ripped out of his thoughts as the voice asked another question.

"What do you live for?"

He was perplexed to say the least. 'Why would they care about something like that... no, why would they even pose the question in the first place.' This wasn't the place for them to seek others purpose in life. The fact that you had been taken in here in the first place suggested that you did not have one. Regardless, he did not find himself in a position to inquire about their means of investigation... no matter what exactly they wanted out of it.

"I do not know," he answered, again hoping this answer would suffice. He was 'happily' surprised as he was not met with the same question again, but something very much the same.

"Why do you live?" the voice asked.

Those two questions had managed to agitate him quite a bit, primarily because of the absurdity of the questions, but also because he was unable to answer them properly. His anger got the better of him as he quickly snapped back at the voice, "Why are you asking these questions?"

A long silenced ensued after his remark, and as he was beginning to doubt his outburst, the blinding light was removed from his eyes. He quickly jumped at the opportunity and opened his eyes. At first he could not see anything but the still blinding remnants of the light, though as they slowly adjusted themselves he began to grow aware of his surroundings for the first time in his stay in what seemed to be a completely white room with nothing in it. He wasn't completely sure if the room was actually white as she was unable to perceive any other colour, though his suspicions were affirmed as he saw a man walk into his peripheral vision.

He was nothing more than a moving blur, a blob only identifiable by the lack of other possibilities. The man walked around for a while before sitting down on a chair, presumably white as he was not able to see it and still wasn't even though he knew it was there. He could feel a pair of eyes piercing into him.

"Why are we asking you these questions you say," the man said. It sounded almost as if the man was mocking him. "It's quite simple you see. All of this," the man said, waving a part of his blur around the room, "is to destroy you." The last sentences tone had been bordering on the line of joy. He just didn't understand why they would go through all of this trouble if the end result would be the same no matter what.

"Why are you doing... all of this?"

"I thought I already explained that," the man responded coldly. It almost felt as if they were kicking him while he was down, though the man laughed very briefly and stopped as abruptly as he had started. "The reason we are talking right now is to destroy you. The reason we want to destroy you is something entirely different," the man said, almost as if he wanted him to ask, and he was going to do that.

"Why do you want to destroy... me?" he said, whilst feeling incredibly doubtful and unsure of his cooperation. The man smiled, or at least he believed he smiled.

"The reason we want to destroy you is because when we are going to rebuild you afterwards you will have noting to go back to. If your very person is destroyed you would have no refuge nor would you have something to hold on to. Now of course I presume you wish to ask why we seek to rebuild you, and the answer to that question is equally simple. If we were to kill you now, you would be satisfied, you would be over. As a person without faith, your soul would simply fade away with your mind and body. But if you were of faith, then your soul would linger for the rest of eternity, spending the rest of its existence within the confines of hell. To threaten you with death now is something the previous generation would have done, but right now killing you would be a waste. We will destroy your mind and incorporate the soul, and whilst doing so your physical body will be the catalyst of destruction." The man ended his explanation by crossing his legs. His eyes had managed to adjust just enough to barely see the man's general features. Though he couldn't find the effort to care about that, as one single question continuously floated inside of his mind.

"Why are you telling me all of this?" he asked, attempting to find reason within something he perceived as madness, but was clearly sanity from the others point of view. The man laughed once more at his question.

"I assumed you would've been able to figure this out, alas, I'll need to explain that as well," he said, a malicious smile now upon his lips. He could see it now. "I'm telling you all of this, as this will also lead towards your own demise. The fact that you know exactly what is happening at every given moment, that would normally give you a form of reassurance, however when you are rendered unable to combat what we are doing, and eventually the effects of it becomes visible to you as well, you will know exactly why we are doing this. Now, is there anything else you wish to ask of me, or can we proceed?"

He sat there, quite unsure of his thoughts. He had imagined something completely different, something far more simple. They would torture him and make him recognize their god, and then that was it. But this wasn't torture, or at least not that sort of torture. This seemed far worse than the rest. From what he understood of it, they would be digging his grave with words and then make him end himself... though the person at that point probably wouldn't be him any more. It would be a completely different person... 'It would be their You,' he figured. "Can we proceed?" the man asked once more, ripping him out of his thoughts again.. He looked at the man, but the light was slowly coming back.

"Wait!" he said as soon as he had noticed the intensity of the light intensity increasing. The light averted itself and the man tilted his head slightly.

"Yes?"

"Who are you?" He could see another smile, though he was unsure of what lied behind it.

"I'm the same as you, though it seems that you are unsure of what you are so its up to you to figure it out," the man said, standing up from the chair. The smile turned from being unidentifiable into malicious, much like the one before. The smile was the last thing he noticed before the light blinded him again, forcing him to shut his eyes.

As he sat within the silence for a few seconds some things became apparent to him. He had begun to feel his arms about halfway through the man's explanation and his legs shortly thereafter. His arms were strapped onto the chair he was sitting on. His arms were barely reaching the two supporting legs in the back. His legs were strapped onto the chairs other two legs in the front. It wasn't comfortable to say the least but he could think of a couple of things to worsen it, so it wasn't all that bad he figured.

He was caught by surprise as the apathetic voice began asking questions again.

"Why do you live?" Again, he didn't know how to respond. 'Why do I live..?' he asked himself. He found an answer incredibly quickly when he compared it to the previous question... It had searched for purpose, where this was searching for cause, so the obvious answer was; "Because my heart still beats," he said rather stoutly. Yet the voice did not care.

"Why are you here?" it asked with its infuriating indifference. They knew why he was here, so what was the purpose of these questions... The man had said their purpose was to break him, but that still left him confused, as he did not see how any of these questions mattered in any way.

"You know why I'm here," he answered, attempting to sound as defiant as he probably could. He was disappointed however as the voice asked another question.

"Who are you?" the voice asked.

His mind was blank. Whether it was rage or confusion, he knew somewhere in himself that he had an answer for this question. Though there was nothing. He desperately searched his head for anything, a word that he would be able to cling on to as a bastion of defence against their You... You... 'I can't just let them do what they want with me. I've got to find an answer for this...' He recalled some of what he read the night before he had been caught. Coming to think of it, he briefly wondered how long it had been since he had been captured, but he quickly pushed that thought away, as it had nothing to do with his current situation. '_Their minds were replaced with the churches You_... what were they replacing... Their minds? No, their minds were them, but I'm not them... Who am I?' He knew it was there, he knew that he knew the answer, but whenever he attempted to answer nothing came to mind.

"Who are you?" the voice asked again, breaking his concentration. At that moment his mind reached a consensus. He wasn't satisfied with his answer, however he was more unsatisfied with the question so in a way the answer was quite befitting.

"I am myself," he said. It left a sour taste in his mouth. In general he wasn't fond of such banal answers to any question, but this one was different. He was practically forced to answer, though he didn't have one. The only thing he had was this answer and a tired mind. They would have to be satisfied with this, though he was quite confounded over why he was trying to satisfy them. He shrugged. Maybe if he gave them what they wanted they would be over with this whole ordeal sooner... granted this whole ordeal would end in his death, so maybe it wasn't the right choice... he shrugged, when every possible route ends in death why even bother taking any of them.

"Answers assimilated, terminating consciousness," the voice said. Immediately as it did he felt an indescribable feeling, something that could only have been presumed to be electricity, but it wasn't. It felt different, but it really didn't matter. He was knocked out after a second of pain.

His eyes opened.

The light was gone. He was looking into a grey ceiling. He tried to move his body and succeeded. There were no restraints, he was free to move within the confines of the cell. He raised himself up from the rather uncomfortable cell-bed and looked around the room. The colour of the objects in the room were predominately a dull grey, except for a white door with a brass doorknob leading into a lavatory, whatever that was. The word had been etched into the door. Otherwise there were no other features in the room.

His primary concern were the many steel bars keeping him inside the cell. Beyond the bars was a sterilized white hallway. The hallway was running parallel to the cells, which he presumed there was more of. 'Maybe there are other people like me here,' he thought quickly and rose from the bed, heading towards the steel bars. He grasped the bars and tried to push his head through them, but there was not enough room. What he managed to see however was that the hallway continued indefinitely, with the same white wall continuing for as far as his eye could see. There were no cells on the other side of the wall.

He silently damned the creators of the jail, while doing so he kicked the bars. Probably wasn't the best idea considering that they were made of steel and his foot was not. The kick made a quiet noise however, though he didn't pay attention to that as he quickly found himself grasping his throbbing foot. He shook off the notion of surveying his immediate surroundings and returned back towards the cell-bed.

"Is anyone there?" he heard a voice say somewhere from the hallway. He quickly stopped and turned around. Someone was there, and by the sound of it it was a male voice, around his own age, he wasn't really sure about that point. 'Maybe I'm not all alone in this mess after all,' he figured, sighing somewhat relieved.

Then he remembered what this whole mess was and quickly tried to retract the sigh a he really didn't want anyone else to go through this as well. But it seemed as if he wasn't the only unfortunate person in there. "Hello?" he said, his voice wavering ever so slightly as he greeted this unknown entity.

"Ah, so there was actually someone there, what a relief," the person said with an almost happy tone. "I don't mean it in the wrong way of course," he quickly said, laughing awkwardly.

"I was thinking the exact same thing," he said. They shared a laugh, something completely new to him. Within the confines of hell he found a light previously unseen. The world really has a strange irony he figured. "So... what's your name?" he asked.

"I've been asked that a lot lately," the person said, chuckling slightly.

"Oh... I'm sorry..."

"Don't worry about it, it's not your fault anyway. I'm Galvian," Galvian responded.

"Could you please repeat that?"

"I said I'm Galvian," the Galvian said, much to his own disbelief. It was almost as if the last remaining fragment of who he was tore apart... ripped apart... stolen... 'If he is Galvian then who am I? It might not be that I felt comfortable with the name, but it was still mine... maybe it's _them_ whom placed this... liar, this thief here... Maybe it's Chraiot that's been doing what he does for a longer period of time... He probably used the name to instil a feeling of warmth, of security. It's his fault, he must have deceived this person as well. He isn't Galvian, neither am I... Galvian doesn't exist, it's probably just a persona he created in order help himself out. Maybe Galvian is a selfless existence, it's only purpose is to serve him, to please him as he sees fits. But this person is seemingly unaware of that... do I tell him?'

"Are you still there?" Galvian asked with a worried tone.

"Yeah..." he said with slight hesitation.

"Is something wrong?"

The silence swept over him like a tidal-wave crashing against a little island, wrapping him in its murky waters, removing his chance of escape. 'Should I lie in order to protect him..? Is that what he wants...? Either suffering the same fate as I, or be blinded by _his_ deceit. Does he need to know? Is it necessary...? And what about myself? Who am I to decide any such thing... who am I...' his thoughts gave into the silence as well.

"Are you al right? Galvian asked with the same tone. And so the silence was shattered, the waters retreated and the decision was made.

"Yeah, I'm fine, you don't have to worry about it," he said dismissively.

"Are you sure?" Galvian persisted.

"Yes," he answered.

"I see... anyway, what's you name?" he asked, attempting to break the uncomfortable tension. Little did Galvian know that under normal circumstances he would only have worsened the situation, but now was different.

"I don't have a name," he said rather detached. The meeting with _this_ Galvian had made it glaringly obvious. He didn't have a name, even if he tried to hold on to the last shreds of his former identity, _Galvian_, he knew it was nothing more than a fabricated lie. Just acknowledging the fact was painful, but what hurt more was the fact that he was forced to deceive this person, or rather, he wasn't deceiving, he was just withholding the truth. They were both going to die anyway, so there was no point in causing any more harm...

"I'm sorry to hear that..."

"Don't be, it's not like it matters right now. It's not like a name can change anything," he said. For some inexplicable reason he felt something heavy push on his chest after saying it.

"That is true, I guess."

"Oh by the way, I meant to ask this earlier, but I forgot..."

"Yes?"

"Where exactly are we?"

"They call it Purgatory. They say it's the place that prepares you for heaven by burning your sins away through the _purgatorius ignis_. Most of the guards say that we should be happy, as this is just a state of cleansing. I think I heard somewhere as well that only those who are dead enter Purgatory, which would suggest that we are not alive even though we breathe. It's just confusing, nonsensical, that is what it is."

"That makes sense..." he whispered to himself. 'His interpretation of Purgatory would suggest that he doesn't really understand where we are... maybe he knows but he is just denying it?' He shrugged it off.

"Did you say som-..." he was interrupted by the sound of footsteps coming from the hallway. He could hear a slight murmur coming from the guards, if they were guard that is. They drew closer as the seconds passed by, the murmur growing larger as they slowly approached the two cells. The footsteps and the murmuring stopped just before reaching his cell, though they must have been right in front of Galvian's...

He stepped further back, away from the hallway, away from the guards. He heard a quiet click and something reminiscent of crying coming from the room next to his. He couldn't do anything. Just standing there was all he could barely manage to do. He heard another click and soon after the marching started again. The footsteps faded away.

He was alone.

He didn't know how long it had been, as he had know reference of time within the confines of the cell. He had slept eight times for longer periods, but otherwise he didn't know. It couldn't have been much more than a week, or so he believed. The past week had been mostly filled with nothingness, a mind-crushingly dullness that never disappeared.

He had found some thoughts in the lavatory. Mostly musing about its name and why they chose to call it that instead of a toilet. Other than that, nothing had happened. He had believed that he heard some footsteps once but there was no click, there was no unlocking of a door so he had figured that it was just his mind playing tricks on him.

Though on the tenth presumed day the marching was back. It was much the same as it was when they had taken Galvian away, though there was no quiet chatting. Only the sound of feet walking in unison down a hallway. Again they stopped in front of Galvian's cell, though this time, unlike the time where he had imagined them, he heard the click once, and then twice. Though unlike the last time, they moved in the other direction, towards his own cell.

His heart practically stopped as he saw the first guard move into his vision, in front of his own cell. He was completely clad in white, from head to toe. A long white robe with the churches symbol on the chest. A dark T-cross with the circle on top. Several more entered his vision. He could see six, though that wasn't his main concern at this point in time. They all stopped outside his cell and looked at him.

He heard the click. He saw the bars suddenly disappear. He saw them as they stepped into the room. He backed away from them, stumbling down onto his bed. He was sweating profusely.

"STAY AWAY!" he shouted with what air remained in his lungs as he was practically hyperventilating. He clawed at the bed sheets, grabbing anything to hold on to as they slowly moved closer. One of them raised its hand and he felt the same indefinable feeling again. The pseudo-electricity coursing through him, the unbearable second of agony and then nothing.

He woke up.

This time there was no light, nor was he strapped into a chair. He wasn't behind any bars either. There was no white walls or people. There was nothing even resembling Purgatory where he was. From what he could see, he was sitting on a flat grassy field, stretching as far as his eyes could see. The sky above him was blue and the sun was shining brightly. There was a slight refreshing breeze. It was a very idyllic scenery, only broken by a mirror standing in the middle of the field.

"Where... am I?" he said to himself as he sat up. He looked around again, seeing the exact same as what he saw before. He was sitting in the middle of a green field, he could clearly see it. Though it felt wrong which didn't surprise him. 'It must be one of their tricks, it has to be,' he thought to himself. It didn't make sense to him, much like everything else that had occurred ever since he had been caught.

He stood up and fixated his eyes on the only thing that stood out. The mirror. He could see himself in it, or what he presumed to be himself. 'It might as well be someone else for all I know,' he figured as he moved closer.

He was now standing directly in front of the mirror, staring into it, looking for something, anything. But there was nothing strange about it. Everything was normal, disregarding the place he was of course. He turned around and looked at the landscape once more. "Where am I?" he said to himself again.

"You're in the middle of nowhere," he heard a voice say behind him. He quickly turned around and saw the same mirror, saw the same reflection, however something was different. All of the facial features were gone, it was nothing more than an empty template.

"Who are you?" he said quickly, with a slight hint of hostility in his voice.

"We are the same, you and I. We are all here, yet we are none there," the reflection said.

"Why am I here and where is this?"

"We are here because of what we are. Here we are everything, and from whence you came you are nothing. I do not exist in the nothing, only within the everything can I manifest. I serve the purpose of igniting the _purgatorius ignis, _for the gods of nothing ordered me, they constructed me and lead me, much like they will lead you," the reflection explained, its skin now turning completely white. The reflection was now nothing more than a figure, just a shape without any features.

He watched it carefully. He didn't like the situation, which was a given. Ever since being captured he had never been able to rest, nor find relief, so why would this be any different? It concerned him greatly how the reflection spoke of the gods of nothing... It felt malicious. Evil, even. So he stood there, contemplating whether or not to follow the conversation, much like he had done during the interrogation. He reached the same conclusion as he did then.

"Where will they lead me?"

"They will lead this world into nothing, and they will lead the nothing into everything. They will shatter the very foundation which this world rests on, and by doing so it will collapse into the gaping abyss beneath," as the reflection continued he noticed how clouds were starting to gather in the sky, soon it would be gone behind the sheet. "This very conversation is leading us towards a simulated breakdown."

"Can't I stop it?!" he asked as the clouds were starting to rain ever so slightly as they grew darker.

"I'm sorry," the reflection said solemnly. "The gods of nothing have rendered us powerless within the everything. The gods only created me in order to tell you all of this. We already know everything, yet you cover behind artificial ignorance and quasi-strength, hiding yourself from the obvious truth of our destruction. I am here to break that illusion, not to lend you the power that you lost. We are powerless within this realm, as you can see" the reflection said gesturing towards the constantly deteriorating weather. "My time here is almost at its end, but there is something that still needs to be said."

He was starting to sweat. He knew what the reflection was going to say, something he had known for far too long. It had haunted him since it had happened, at first he had denied it. He had convinced himself that he had not taken it, but it had kept coming back. No matter how he looked at it, he always reached the same conclusion. He had always hidden from the fact, always running away from the truth. He knew it would hurt to admit it, but he sought refuge in the fact in that he had no one to atone for. No one to submit to, nor anyone to apologize to. There was no one...

And as he stood there, looking into the mirror, the smooth surface with the water running down it... he knew. The ground began to crack beneath his feet and the skies thundered. 'Maybe it's all just righteous retribution... I deserve this... don't I? Such a small thing...' he thought to himself.

It was close.

His whole body was shaking and his heart was pounding. He could barely see clearly any more.

"You stole it," the reflection said, as the ground disappeared beneath his feet.

"You killed her," it said.

The glass shattered and the clouds dispersed. He was thrown into the darkness, falling down... down into his deepest despair. Into the places which he had once governed with care, in order to keep the thoughts and the feelings at bay. But no longer. The ground had been broken, the mirror had shattered. He was falling.

"I killed her," he said as he gasped for air as his chest was crushed by an immense force.

And so he fell, into the darkness.

* * *

**Author Notes: So yeah... This was quite hard to write, and I got side tracked quite a lot while doing so, anyway, here it is. Part one of his stay in Purgatory. I originally planned to have all of his stay be in one chapter, but I decided to split it up, as having it in one chapter would seem a bit overwhelming, even for me so you get two. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it and please leave a review telling me what you think about it. Something I need to tell you is that he does get food while he is in there, however I chose not to include it as it didn't really... fit in I guess, so yeah.**


	5. Liminoid Illumina: Destruction

**I don't own Fairy Tail.**

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He didn't know how long he had been in there. The first ten days he had barely been able to keep track of time, but those days seemed minuscule to what came afterwards. Time had seemingly come to a stop, and the only indication of time ever passing by was when the guards came, approximately every tenth day for some kind of torture.

At first he had experienced falling into the void, with screams of scorn yelling at him as he fell. He had quickly resigned himself to his fate and stopped struggling when the guards came for him. They would simply come and take him. They would stop actively sedating him, keeping him awake throughout the journey of reaching his destination. He would simply bow his head as he was dragged along the seemingly never-ending hallway, sometimes taking the occasional glance towards the empty cells he passed.

Speaking of the empty cells his conversations with Galvian had begun to occur less and less frequently as time slowly passed by. They had seemingly both resigned to the shallow contentment of simply being aware of the others presence, without the need to actually confirm it. It was only occasionally when either of them had just returned from one of the sessions that they would actually speak, and normally it would be about what had happened, which for the record, wasn't anything he was fond of recalling.

The means of torture in the beginning had mostly been very similar to nightmares, but soon the times when they would inflict physical harm unto his body became more frequent. They would stretch his body beyond its natural limits, they would slowly and meticulously cut him while he was fully paralyzed but still fully aware. They would cut just enough to make him bleed, but more than enough to send his mind into disarray as it was blinded by the searing pain.

After the cutting they would normally pour searing hot water over the scars, sweeping the blood away but making him scream, or he would have, if not for the fact that he was unable to do so. Sometimes they even go as far as taking an almost molten iron-rod and place the heated end on one of his scars and twisting it. He would usually pass out at this point, but sometimes he was able to involuntarily maintain consciousness in order to feel even more of the pain. It wasn't his intent to feel the pain, but it was merely an effect of his body's resistance, seemingly not wanting to give in.

But all of that frowned in comparison to the needles. Those infernal needles would send his mind into a state of chaos just by the mere sight of them. The first time he experienced it, he was slightly delighted at first, as he did not presume that the needles were that bad. But they had kept on fetching more and more and more... One of the worst parts were when they heated the needles before inserting them, or maybe when they attached an electrical current to the end, allowing the electricity freely course through his body, forcing his whole body to convulse as much as it could while tied to a table. The shaking would only help the needles go deeper into his body, sometimes even reaching his bones.

The pain was unimaginable, though he was slowly starting to get a grasp of it. What he had presumed to be impossible had quickly entered the realm of possibilities, much to his own dismay. At first he tried to figure out why exactly they were torturing him. The image he had conceived in regards to torture were to either forcefully extract information from ones mind, or it was for the simple satisfaction of the torturer.

However they weren't talking, there wasn't a sound within the torture chamber, the only thing he could hear was pain. How one hears pain was still beyond him, but it certainly wasn't thoughts that was going through his head during the sessions. And then their expressions. It brought a whole new meaning to the word apathy. They would simply scowl in indifference whilst inserting their needles into his body, or frown phlegmatically as they cut his skin and twisted their iron.

In the end of their sessions they would remove their tools and then they would leave. Then the light would return as blinding as ever. With the light he found relief in sleep, if he hadn't already blacked out, though when he actually did manage to get through it all, he found himself in the midst of whispers, slowly lulling him to sleep with their malicious messages and hazardous words.

After each of the session he would always find himself lying in the cell on his bed. When he woke up he would always feel his body ache, as the pain would still linger even after the sessions. It normally took around nine days for the pain to fully subside and his body to recuperate, however as soon as the pain had vanished, he would be taken back for more.

And so the cycle continued, his life in a constant flux between painful 'rest' and apathetic torture, his body never being able to find relief, growing ever more tired and powerless as he was constantly being starved. He would only receive the slightest amount of food and water necessary to survive. The food came in intervals of three days while he was in the cell. Dry half-eaten bread and murky-water was the ingredients for his food.

He had sometimes heard Galvian complain about the rations, but decided to keep quiet. It didn't matter any way, the only thing one could do was submit to authority and resign to ones own fate, if there was any such thing.

He had sometimes wondered if Galvian was going through the same things as he, though after what seemed like a very peculiar conversation they had had, he reached a conclusion suggesting that they were being treated differently. The conversation had sprouted out of no-where, much to his own surprise as that had never happened before. It was on the fifth day, he presumed when Galvian had suddenly begun speaking to him.

"You know... I'm going to escape from here," Galvian said out of no-where. He had not been able to deduce whether or not his voice had sounded sincerely hopeful or if he was just trying to convince himself that he would be able escape Purgatory...

"How?" he responded, the only thought surging through his head was something along the lines of; 'Is he an idiot, is he desperate, is he blind or is he brilliant...?' Of course looking back at it, he had quickly identified which was the case, but during the time since the conversation and the next time they came for him, he was left in uncertainty.

"I'm going to escape while they are dragging me to the chamber," he stated. His voice was tired, though still somewhat hopefully.

'It's as if he truly believes he's able to do it... I'm kind of envious of him, for him to still be able to maintain such thoughts considering where we are... nevertheless...' he thought. For some reason it was becoming increasingly hard to merely think, and speaking even more so. He did not know why, but it felt increasingly painful for him to do either of the things, so he reverted to a much simpler form of speaking that what he was used to, out of necessity of course. He was still able to construct a somewhat large amount of coherent thoughts, though he had a feeling that he would soon not be able to do so.

"How?" he said simply.

"I'm going to overpower the guards when they are dragging me, and then I'm gonna leg it as fast as I can... It's going to work, right?" Galvian asked, hoping to find an answer that would reassure him.

Though he would not find that from him any more. 'Screw false hope, screw lying to protect... screw this damned situation!' he cursed within the confines of his mind. 'All I get is pain and punishment, and this person, this sight-deprived person is trying to make me lie for him?! No! I will not help create his little castle of fantasy any longer... He helped break mine, so I'll repay him...'

"No," he said, with a surprisingly and unintentionally apathetic voice. It didn't feel like it was his own voice that had said it, but he knew it was...

"N-no...?" Galvian stuttered, seemingly unable to understand, much less accept what he had just said.

"No," he repeated, his voice still somehow maintaining complete indifference even though his mind was shouting at him. He wanted to scream, he wanted to yell his anger, his frustration at him. He wanted to tell him how he was being deceived, how he wasn't Galvian, how everything he had said was idiotic, how his very existence might as well be for nought, how much he loathed him for ripping away his one and only name, how much he hated him for making him realize how he needed the name, for making him realize how painful it had felt when his identity had been crushed, and yet here he was, sprouting this bullshit like it was nothing.

But he didn't. He couldn't. All he could say was a short no, a no that tore deeper into himself than the person he had just rejected. A no that would break the only relation he had to another person. But he had convinced himself that the no was needed. He couldn't let him be deceived by his own thoughts much like he had. When he had first arrived he had faintly hoped that he would be able to escape, but those thoughts were quickly extinguished by the torture, though it seemed as if this person was still maintaining his...

There was nothing more he wanted to do than spit at this person, yet he knew he was in the wrong. He wanted himself to be wrong, and him to be right. He wanted him to escape, he wanted to know that it could be done, though he knew that it couldn't be like that. No matter how hard he wanted to believe, he couldn't as it would merely be a bastardization of the reality, and said bastardization would be broken as soon as he would attempt to escape.

But Galvian didn't seem to have that harbour the same conflicts as himself as he said; "Fine, suit yourself. I'm still going to escape whether you think I can or not," sounding rather offended or let down. He just scoffed at Galvian and went back to what he was doing prior to the conversation which was staring into the ceiling of the cell.

That was the second last time he ever spoke with him. The last being the moment when they met each other after one of his sessions. It had been a quick and pointless conversation that had no purpose but still had taken place.

It had started when he had just woken up, his body still aching after the torture which had been the knives and iron as far as he could remember. He remember having vaguely said; "You here?" into the air.

It had surprised him slightly when he heard Galvian say; "Yes," very dryly and sharp. It was a wonder to him how he could muster up the effort of being offended... it was beyond him, though he didn't muse on that fact too long.

"Okay," he had responded. That was the last words he had heard from Galvian. They had both resigned themselves to mutual hostility.

After that nothing happened for a long time, fifteen, maybe twenty torture sessions later the worst had occurred. He still remembered it vividly. In contrast to the physical torture, it didn't harm his body in any way, nor did he believe it was intentional. It was more like a dream rather than something that had instigated. Granted, he had first presumed the falling to be a dream as well, but this time he could not recall them fetching him from his cell. So he could do nothing but presume that it was a dream, which to him maybe it all the more worse.

He could vaguely remember something about dreams reflecting the real world, though when he had heard it the first time he had thought it to be nonsense, though after _that _it had made sense.

At first it had started like a simple dream, a dream where the picture turned from black to grey, and then suddenly the picture he was seeing became more lucid. In the beginning of the dream he could remember hovering over his old house, at the dump, but as the dream progressed he began to slowly move towards the city. Clouds were hanging over the city, slowly gazing down on the feeble humans with their grey omnipresence.

As he soared through the sky he was beginning to lose height, eventually landing down in a back alley. As he did snow began to fall from the skies, slowly laying itself on every surface it had available to it. Though he didn't pay much attention to that, as he could clearly remember the scene. At the back of the alley, there were two orphans leaning against each other whilst sitting up against the wall.

There was a boy and a girl, both of them not older than seven. The boy had short-black hair, messed up and filthy, whereas the girl had somewhat clean crimson hair just reaching her shoulders. It was a very serene picture as they both sat there, sleeping soundly as the snow was falling on their little heads, though he knew what it was. He could see it clearly, how the little boy was completely covered by a rugged blanket, leaving the half of the girls body open to the cold. Her face looked so peaceful. She almost looked happy as she sat there with her eyes closed.

He saw the little boy beginning to move ever so slightly as he opened his eyes. His eyes had a beautiful cerulean colour... The boy sat there for a moment, looking around. He then looked at the girl next to him and opened his mouth, uttering a couple of indistinguishable words. The girl remained still, even when the boy shook her body with his hands.

He gently pushed her, and time seemed to stop in the moment as the girl began to slowly fall over, down into the snow. Her face looked so peaceful as she fell, just like the snowflakes, down towards the ground where she would be absorbed into the mass, waiting only for the heat to come and melt her away, leaving nothing behind but a faint memory of her brief existence.

The boy watched in shock as she fell, his clear cerulean eyes opening wide as he screamed at the girl... He could not hear the words but he knew what was being said...

"Wake up!" The boy shouted as he shook the girls motionless body. Just as he did he looked away from the girl, towards the street. He could hear the sound of bells ringing somewhere in the distance.

He looked back down at the girl and picked her up with what strength he had, carrying her towards the street as he fought back the tears that were slowly welling up in his eyes. He saw as the kid ran as fast as he could towards the street, towards the fleeting mass that were starting to assemble and walk towards the cathedral.

He reached the end of the alley and plunged himself into the stream of people. He looked up at the countless faces... he remembered how he begged them for help, how he plead for them to spare some of their attention to the girl in his arms, to the lifeless kid in his arms...

They didn't care. The continued their walk towards the cathedral, overlooking the boy as he helplessly screamed at them... Some of them even bumped into the kid, knocking him and the girl over... They both fell to the ground... the others continued.

The boy looked up at all of the people walking past them, all of the people with the ability to help but with no reason to... he looked at the girl again, the precious being, knocked out of his arms, lying on the ground.

Dead.

The boy let lose the overwhelming amount of tears that had been building up... And there he sat, in the midst of the never-ending stream of people, sobbing over the girl with the crimson hair... screaming, yelling for anyone to help... but there was still nothing, no matter how hard he tried, they continued walking past him with their apathetic faces, not even sparring them a gaze.

He stood there, standing in the air above the street, watching over them like an incapacitated guardian angel. He wanted to go down there, he wanted to comfort the boy, he wanted to awaken the girl, but he couldn't.

The snow was falling from the sky as tears were falling from his eyes, as the boy clutched the girls clothes, crying into the tattered fabric. His last thoughts were with the girl, with the tiny little ant beneath him, with her crimson hair and her serene face... with the boys tears slowing running down her face, falling down into the sleet, down into the countless footprints...

That was the end of the dream, or rather, memory. He woke up calmly in his bed, much like when he returned from the sessions, but his body didn't ache. The only thing it was doing was clouding his eyes and wetting his cheeks.

Around five days after that they came for him. They had taken Galvian the day before they came for him. He only heard two clicks and the footsteps, and then he was being dragged along the corridor. He was completely docile throughout it all, even when they had started with the needles. Even when he had felt the electrical surge through him, he didn't move an inch.

He just lied there, looking into the ceiling as the pain slowly overtook his mind, though never completely removing the feeling of emptiness. It persisted through the worst parts of it, always never entirely releasing its grip over his mind. Even after he woke up in his cell, staring into the white ceiling, it was still there.

He felt absolutely helpless and confused when he was faced with this immense force of nothing. The day passed by slower and slower, the next session drawing nearer for every breath he took, but somehow still managed to stay far away.

It was only on the fifth day when the emptiness was shaken. It was a fairly mundane event that he had seen coming for quite a while, well, not entirely in the way it had transpired. In the midst of the nothingness, he heard a quiet yelp come from the corridor, or more specifically, in the general direction of Galvian's cell.

He had stood up from the bed and walked to the bars, looking in the direction, yet unable to see anything. He had been standing there for a little while when he saw a liquid slowly creep its way across the white floor, down towards his own cell.

It was red.

His mind panicked briefly, but quickly calmed down. It didn't shock him, nor did it upset him. He had already fundamentally established that they would both die the moment they met each other. Not because of the meeting, but because of their situation. They had been two lost souls trying to make their way through the cleansing fires of Purgatory, though the result of doing that would be death. He knew it, and it seemed to him that Galvian had just realized it.

The problem was that he had not expected him to commit suicide. It wasn't supposed to be like that. They were supposed to be tortured, broken, then destroyed. After that they would be rebuilt with the 'help' of the church and then killed. Galvian had just selfishly ended himself, leaving him left behind without anyone to hold on to.

He could not find the silent contentment that had been present while he had been alive, nor had he been able to rely on him. Not through words nor talk, but through presence and mere existence. But that was gone now.

It was all gone.

He stood there and silently watched as his only allies's blood slowly made it down the hallway, only to form a pool right in front of his cell. He felt his eye twitch as he gazed at the trail, and imagined what it must have looked like on the other side. Being able to stand on the other side of the confinement, looking into the two cells and silently judging the ones trapped in there.

Of course he had convinced himself that if he was out there, he would immediately find a way to help the ones inside, though he was beginning to doubt that intention. Not because it was bad or because it was evil what he was trying to do, in fact it would probably be described as the exact opposite, but he was beginning to believe that he would just run, given the opportunity.

Run without any regard for the people trapped behind. Run without any regard for morals or good will... Just run.

He stood there and watched the little blood stream turn into a pool. He wasn't sure how long he stayed there, but it was long enough for the blood stream to end and then dry up, leaving only a slight red mark along the hallway.

As he stood there he felt the emptiness grow inside. It went from being nothing, to more nothing. How that was possible, he did not know. He didn't even spare it a thought, as he was simply incapable of doing so. He turned his back on the pool and walked over to his bed again.

He lied down and went back into a state of perpetual non-existence, staring pointlessly into the ceiling as the emptiness started to spread even further within him. After a couple of hours he slowly began to fall asleep. He did not dream, but at one point he believed he had heard some footsteps in front of his cell.

When he woke, he found that the pool of blood had suspiciously moved itself closer to the bars. The trial of which the blood had used in order to get to the pool was gone as well. It was as if it had moved by itself, though he quickly dismissed the thought as it was simply to bothersome for his mind to figure out.

Nothing happened that whole day, though when he woke up the day after, the pool had gotten closer yet again. It was now reaching the iron bars, half of the pool on the outside and the other half on the inside. For some inexplicable reason the blood on his side of the bars had turned completely black, in sharp contrast to the floor. He paid no attention to it, though he stayed on the bed, except for the one time he had used the lavatory, though h had made sure to walk as far away from the now two-coloured pool as possible.

He went to sleep again. It was another dreamless night. He woke up and found that the pool had now situated itself in the middle of his cell, completely black. He had only looked at it briefly before diverting his gaze back to the space just above the bed. That day and the next seemingly blended into one through a haze, where he had slipped from consciousness several times without really noticing it.

He paid no attention to the blood, he didn't even look for it once, though he did look out at the hallway once and it wasn't within his vision. It was when he heard the same footsteps he had heard for the last two-hundred days or so. It could be more, it could be less, accuracy was irrelevant. Though he was slightly surprised when he heard the two ever so familiar clicks and then the footsteps stopping after heading down the hallway.

After that he looked at the ceiling again. He felt nothing and his mind was empty. He did not hear, he did not smell and the only thing he could see was a white surface.

And so the last day dawned upon him. There was no blood. There was just the same silence that never seemed to go away. Not even the sound of the footsteps managed to sweep it away. It remained, as did the footsteps which grew ever louder.

He began to push himself off the bed immediately as they had gotten near enough, as was tradition. A faint recollection of how he had struggled when they had come for him first crossed his mind. He smirked, as best as a completely passive could anyway. He placed his feet on the ground, only to find out he wasn't standing on the floor.

He had both his feet firmly planted in a pool of blood on the floor. It was red. He stared at his feet until the marching stopped. He looked up and saw the usual attire, he hear the usual click, but after that they stood still, seemingly waiting for him to walk to them.

He lowered his head slight and took the first step out of the blood and started to walk towards them. He was leaving scarlet footprints behind as he walked towards them. He walked out into the midst of them, and they all started to move down the hallway. They didn't touch him, most likely because they didn't need to, as he silently walked with them with his head staring into the ground in front of him.

He tainted the white hallway with the blood of Galvian as he walked down, towards the chamber. They walked for almost five minutes before the reached the end of the corridor, revealing a black door. They stopped again, letting him take the last steps towards the door, allowing him to open it. He firmly grasped the door-knob, but then hesitated for a moment. He looked at the door, then shook his hand and turned the knob, pushing the door inwards and heading into the room.

The room was completely white, without any furniture except for two chairs placed at the end of the room. He felt himself get pushed in the back. He stumbled towards the general direction of the left one, though he quickly regained control and walked towards the left one and sat down.

He was instantaneously blinded by a very familiar white light, much like the one he had encountered at his first session. Shortly thereafter he heard another distinctively familiar voice again, a voice much unlike the rest, it wasn't apathetic.

"Why hello there," the voice said with sadistic amusement somehow weaved into the words. "It's been quite a while, hasn't it?" the voice asked rhetorically.

He nodded.

"So, let's get started, shall we?" he heard the voice say, as he heard a sound of someone sitting down in a chair. He could but presume that the person who was speaking to him had just sat down. "You're a bit quiet aren't you... did something happen?" the voice said, the tone as slippery and sadistic as ever. It was clearly uttered by a man whom was currently ecstatic as can be.

He nodded again.

"Anyway, so where were we... ah, yes," the voice said, clearing its throat.

"What is your name?"

"I don't have one."

"What do you live for?"

"Nothing."

"Why do you live?"

"I don't."

"Why are you here?"

"Because I'm wrong."

"Who, are, you?"

"I'm not."

Silence.

"Well, that's quite surprising... to change your answers so much since the last time we spoke... Galvian turned to I don't have one... I don't know turned to nothing... Because my heart beats turned to I don't... I don't know turned to because I'm wrong... I am myself, turned to I am not... that is indeed quite surprising. Don't you think?"

He nodded once more. The light disappeared and in front of him he saw the most malicious, sadistic, ecstatic, vile and complete smile he had ever experienced.

"Could you tell me..." the mouth said slowly. "What happened to _Galvian_?"

The earth shook and the sky crumbled, the light was replaced with the dark as he heard a crashing sound and a faint scream.

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**Author Notes: And so ends the prologue. Or pseudo-prologue, what ever you get the point (hopefully). The next chapter will have Fairy Tail and it will intertwine the two stories, though I want to make something clear.**

**A) This will -NOT- be the last time I will interact with this time frame.**

**B) Answers will -NOT- be given any time soon, nor will I answer -ANY- questions in regards to the plot, unless they are legitimate concerns originating from my lack of ability to explain things. Things I will not explain is; how exactly he is able to enter the Fairy Tail time frame, amongst other things which I won't state right now.**

**C) There will -EVENTUALLY- be romance in this story, though it will -NOT- be a focus point. It will only appear when I see fit, it won't be rushed and it won't be to please any of the factions (NaLu, Jerza, etc), as the story will be constructed around the idea of interaction creating the connection, rather than me wanting to appease people by giving them something like that.**

**D) All of this does -NOT- mean that I am not open for suggestions, nor will it mean that I won't explain something if need be. If anyone has any major concerns that they would like to discuss with me, leave a review and I will try my best in order to explain it in the next chapter's author notes.**

**If any of this scared you, I apologize, however I felt it was somewhat necessary. Regardless, there's only going to be like three or four people actually reading this as most others have (probably) been scared away by the strong sense of originality and the lack of Fairy Tail in the first 5 chapters (and if it's a prologue, 25k words, really..? Oh well).**

**I just hope ya'll be stickin' with me for da' ride 'n, well... Thanks for reading so far. I appreciate the fact that you've taken the time, so if it's not too much of a bother, please leave a review telling me what you thought of these last five chapters as a whole. This was actually quite an experiment for me to write, and mostly it was quite hard. Try writing 5000 words without... well, anything really happening. It's not easy I tell ye'. I'm now a pirate. Ahoy' me matties, we be' settin' sail to the great land of Clandestine.**

**P.S. I took the liberty of changing the name from Dream of a Guttersnipe to Clandestine, and changing it for rated T to M, mostly to be safe. (Torture, suicide and decapitation aren't really the most teen oriented topics...)**


	6. Enigma

**I don't own Fairy Tail, nor any of the characters in it (This time, there is actually Fairy Tail in it, yay?)**

* * *

It had been a fairly regular day for Erza. Well, it would have been if it wasn't for that dark-guild trying to kill all of the guild leaders, though something along those lines weren't something _that _unusual, the real thing that made everything different was that person. In order to correctly understand what happened a slight precursor is necessary, just to get some context at least so one could make sense of that mostly nonsensical meeting. Looking back at it, Erza came to realize it wasn't just the meeting that was off, it was him in general, but her first impression of him certainly didn't help his image.

It had all begun when they had rushed into Oshibana Station just after it had been taken over by the dark-guild. As they, Natsu, Lucy, Gray, Erza and Happy walked, granted Natsu didn't walk as he was being dragged by Lucy and Happy was flying, however they made their way through the well-lit hallway with several pillars on either side.

Everything looked fairly ordinary for a train station, if you could overlook the fallen soldiers on the stairs. Most of the soldiers weren't breathing which sent a chill down Lucy's spine, or it would have if it wasn't for the fact that it was currently being heated by a fire-mage...

On the top of the stairs there was a single soldier, sitting with his knees up in front of him, his arms wrapped around them, slowly rocking back and forth, mumbling incomprehensible words that made him look practically insane.

He looked up as he heard them approaching and he was now staring intently at them. It was unnerving to say the least for them, even for Erza. The man looked traumatized at best, as he sat there, cold sweat running down his face, his eyes twitching ever so slightly.

"Don't let him touch you..." the soldier mumbled quietly. His voice was shaking heavily as he continued, seemingly disregarding the estranged looks he was getting from the small gathering. He suddenly jumped up and his eyes burst into tears, looking around frantically for apparently no reason. He began to run down the stairs, stumbling halfway down, landing at the feet of Lucy, whom he then looked up at, the tears still flowing from his eyes.

"Oh god... oh god save me... the pain..." the man said, shaking as he curled up into a ball, trying to comfort himself but to no avail.

Erza looked down at him, quite confused over the man's behaviour. It did not seem as if he was hurt, nor did it look like he had been fighting, but something had definitely been able to release such... strong emotions into this man.

"Who did this to you?" Erza asked in a somewhat soft but still commanding tone. The least she wanted to do was cause this man any more pain than what he seemed to be going through already.

The man looked up at her, both fright and pain present in his face... He opened his mouth for a brief second, but then hurriedly decided to close it again post-haste.

Erza intensified her glare slightly at the man.

He winced and crawled back away from her, obviously scared though it seemed like he got the message as he started speaking once more; "Dead eyes..." he managed to say, before returning to his wordless mumbling.

Erza shook his head at the man, just before going over to the man and knocking him out. The others looked at her, mostly shocked as if she had done something insane, though if anything it would've been a coup de grâce.

"A military platoon wouldn't stand a chance... The opponent is a dark-guild, so they are all mages, and from what I've seen there are a few powerful ones, apart from Erigor," she said moving up the stairs. The others followed her in silence as they found that the most appropriate thing to do, mostly because Erza was in a bad mood, but also because of the man seeming _slightly_ demented because of something one of the dark-guild members had done.

They reached the top of the stairs and was met with a large group of people, armed with quite a few weapons, all of them facing the little group from Fairy Tail. They were all maliciously glaring at them.

Most of them were standing in front of a train, though there was one crouching on top of it, wearing a blue kilt, held up with a white belt. It seemed quite worn out as the edges were shredded. He was also wearing a black scarf around his neck. The most noteworthy thing about this man was either his blue tattoos on his chest and the black ones just under his eyes, or the massive scythe he was holding on his back. It was quite easy to identify him as he was the only one of them that stood out.

"I knew you'd come, Fairy Tail," Erigor shouted from a top the train with slight amusement in his voice.

"There so many," Lucy noted as she was starting to sweat slightly. The others remained calm and composed though.

"We've been waiting for you," he noted as he stood up, gesturing with his free arm, the other was holding the scythe, towards the members of the dark guild.

"You're Erigor?" Erza asked rhetorically. There wasn't really anyone else that would fit the character.

"That's... the armour girl we saw the other day," one of the dark-guild members noted, as he recognized Erza.

"I see, so it was her that leaked our plans," the one standing next to him noted. "Well, it doesn't matter anyway."

While both parties were starring each other down, Lucy was frantically attempting to wake up Natsu from his transportation slump, though Happy explained that it wasn't good for Natsu to be transported by anything, that is including Lucy, as she was also a form of transportation, albeit much to her own protest.

"So, what do you intend to do? Depending on your answer you may have to face even worse consequences for your actions," Erza asked, though she wasn't really asking, she was right out demanding an explanation.

"We're just trying to use our spare time productively, we have no work you see," Erigor said quite humorously. He then jumped up and was carried by the wind, propelling him up and keeping him still in the air.

"Wind Magic!" Lucy blurted out as she saw it. It wasn't everyday you saw people floating in mid air... at least not for her.

"It seems like you fail to understand... what do they have in a train station?" he asked Erza with a sadistic grin on his lips.

"... Train station?" Erza said to herself.

Erigor slowly began gliding across the room, towards a pair of loud speakers. As he placed his hand on the speaker, what they were trying to do dawned on Erza.

"Are you going to broadcast Lullaby?!" Erza shouted in mild disbelief. She had known that Eisenwald wasn't the most kind people, but to go to such extents... it made her angry. Very angry.

Seeing Erza reaction brought Erigor into a maniacal laugh, seeing their shocked expressions really amused him. Even if he wasn't planning to kill all the people in Oshibana, albeit his true goal wasn't that much better and would probably bring forth an even sweeter sense of shock and terror, he still enjoyed it.

As his laughter subsided, he looked down at them. It was time for the unnecessary but still somehow omnipresent speech of the villains. "There are hundreds... no, there are thousands of people around this station right now. If we broadcast Lullaby loud enough, the entire town will hear it. The melody of death," he explained, the sadistic smile growing larger.

"Indiscriminate mass murder?!" Erza shouted at him.

"We are simply cleaning them up. The ones who live happily for their entire lives, enjoying their rights, unaware of those whom have had their rights revoked. Living a life oblivious to the unfairness of the world is a sin, thus the Shinigami has come to punish them. A punishment called '**Death**'!"

"If you do that you will never get your rights back... besides, you're the bad one to begin with..." Lucy called out to him.

"Now that we've come this far, we don't want our rights back... We want authority! If we have authority we can simply erase the past and control the future!" Erigor shouted. Just as he finished the sentence, a shuddering, cold shock-wave emerged from somewhere in the crowd, sending a chill down everyone's spine. Even Erigor was affected, as his sadistic smile faded for a brief second as he looked down in the midst of the gathering with a quite worried face. Not for them, but for himself.

Lucy would have shouted something at him, though the ill aura that had just been emitted had thrown her off, though she quickly regained her mental footing and shouted; "You're such a fool!" though admittedly she felt it was quite awkward as the wave had completely destroyed the tension that had just been building up.

"What a pity you don't understand, little flies!" the shadow mage Natsu had encountered on the train early that day exclaimed, as he quickly knelt down, placing one hand on the ground, sending his shadow out towards them. The shadow shot straight past Erza and Gray, heading directly towards Lucy and the Natsu who was now lying on the ground, still mostly out cold.

"You'll die without a glimpse of the new dark age!" the mage shouted, as the shadow erupted from the ground, in the form of a hand, ready to slam Lucy down, though as it approached it was shattered by a first engulfed in flames. Natsu had gotten up just in the nick of time and broken the shadow.

A cocky grin sported his face as he looked at the mage he had previously been unable to fight because of the train. "This time we're on a real battleground!"

The glares from the dark-guild intensified and the previous relaxed, though still somehow strained as the aura had put them off quite a bit, turned to a serious, dark atmosphere, fully intent on defeating the ones standing in front of them.

"Ooh, there's so many of them," Natsu noted, now finally being able to get a good look at the group.

"They are all enemies," Lucy added.

All while this was transpiring a sanguinary, self-confident smile graced Erigor's face. 'You've fallen into the trap, Fairy Tail,' he thought to himself, looking down at them from above. 'We've had to change our plans since you vermin decided to interfere, though we can finally return to our original plan... There's someone who must hear the melody of the flute...' His grin widened. 'Someone I must put to death!'

"This is the strongest team in Fairy Tail," Lucy said, of course unaware of the fact that Mirajane had _greatly_ over exaggerated because she had been caught up in the moment. It didn't really seem to bother the dark-guild, though some, primarily the ones who seemed to actually know what Fairy Tail was seemed to be slightly unnerved, though only the more reason for them to defeat the so called 'strongest team'.

Erigor continued smiling his sadistic smile as he yelled; "I'll leave the rest to you, while I go play the flute," to the footmen down on the ground. This managed to catch Erza's attention, as she had thought that Erigor would probably have to fight them here, as she was quite confident that she would be able to utterly stomp all over the dark-guild, that of course looking away from the possibility of the source of that strange shock-wave was a mage... and was planning on fighting, and in that case, she would probably still win, but even so, it didn't feel right. She shrugged it off though as Erigor floated away.

"Let these clueless flies feel the power of Eisenwald's darkness!" he yelled down to them just before crashing through a window.

"Are you running away Erigor?!" Erza shouted after him, though it was quite apparent what was the case, as he had already flown out the window. Just after stating he would be leaving.

"Is he running to the next building?!" Gray asked no one in particular, and for no particular reason either as no one would be able to answer his question.

"Natsu, Gray! Both of you go after him!" Erza said, managing to extract a groan from both of them. "If you work together, there is no way you would lose to Erigor," she said, with much the same result as her last attempt, though just more of the same as they were both openly groaning into each others faces with a pretty big frown on both.

"We'll take care of things here," Erza said.

"Take care of... that many people? Just us two girls?" Lucy said to herself, looking at the horde that was just standing there for no particular reason, silently waiting for them to do whatever they please before actually starting the fight.

"Erigor is planning to use the flute in the station, you have to go after him and prevent that from happening at any cost," Erza said, unbeknownst to her that Natsu and Gray were glaring at each other behind her back, though that was quickly rectified as she turned around and yelled; "Are you listening to me?!" at them.

Immediately as she turned around they became much better friends, putting an arm over each others shoulder to show their great camaraderie, even managing to hurriedly shout; "Of course!" in unison.

"Go!"

"Aye sir!" they both yelled as they ran off. As soon as they were out of Erza's sight the bond they had forged through the last twenty seconds broke and they returned to glaring at each other, whilst running of course, as neither of them wanted to get on Erza's bad side.

"Two of them ran off!" one of the dark-guild members yelled. "Are they going after Erigor?" another one said.

"Leave them to me," one of the more prominent mages said, sending out what seemed to be leather from his hands towards the railing on the second floor above them. "I'll get rid of them!" he shouted as he flew away.

"I'm going too! I can't forgive that redhead!" the shadow mage shouted as he sunk down into his own shadow, fading away.

"Oh boy, Reyure and Kage are so belligerent... I bet it's more fun to play with the girls than with the guys," one of the few remaining _competent_ mages said.

"It's all for the plan... at least they are more respectable than you," the person standing next to him noted.

"You're still here too."

Erza watched the horde with slight contempt in her eyes. "Once we take care of these, we will go after them," she said quite casually, as if taking out a group of angry mages, although not all competent, but still mages, was an easy task. Granted, for her it was.

Thirty seconds later, all of the dark-mages were lying on the floor, all sorely beaten by Erza in a matter of seconds. The thing that especially marked the difference in power was when Erza had used her armour, **The Knight **and then used **Circle Sword** to remove all the ones still remaining. It had only been after she had knocked out one of the only competent looking mages with one hit that the one who had stood beside him had fled.

"He might be heading to Erigor. Go after him Lucy," Erza commanded.

"Eeh? Me?!" Lucy said, only to be sent away by one of Erza's ever so common and ever so famous glances, though she did say please... though it wasn't really like she was asking her to do it. "Y-yes ma'am !" Lucy said, running after the man that had just left with Happy trailing her.

After Lucy left the room, Erza dispelled **The Knight** and exhaled. It was starting to get to her... 'Driving the magical four-wheeler is really starting to affect me a lot... I leave the rest to you, Natsu, Gray, Lucy...' she thought as she knelt down, supporting herself with her sword that was firmly planted in the ground. 'And Happy too,' she added, just for good measure.

Of course she had presumed she was all alone at this point, which she found out wasn't the case. In the midst of the fallen dark-guild, a single person stood starring at her with his head titled slightly. He was wearing a long-black sleeveless robe and had shoulder-long ashen hair. All in all, he looked ghastly, especially because of his extremely pale skin and the fact that he was very bony. You could clearly see some of the bone structures on his face and his arms seemed to have no fat or muscles on them as it seemed like his skin was hugging his skeleton.

Erza winced slightly when their eyes met. She had never really seen anything like it before. She remembered that the deranged man had described someone as having 'dead eyes', but she had never thought it would be something like that. The cerulean eyes that was silently looking at her had no presence. They were, as the person had said, dead.

Though in between the apathetic stares and the indifferent glances, there was something else. She had only barely been able to pick it up, but it seemed like he was conflicted. For brief moments now and then, it would look like he was about to cry from sorrow, and then he would return to his dead stare once more.

For some reason it reminded her of the time she had been a slave at the Tower of God, where as far as she could remember, some of the long-time slaves had possessed the same eyes, or some resemblance of it, but nothing to that extent. She felt bad for him, though was quickly brought back into the real world when a grunt of pain came from one of the dark-guild members.

To her, he was an enemy, a member of Eisenwald, a person that had sent an innocent person into a hysteria through unknown means, a person that was supporting indiscriminate slaughter, so no matter what he had been through, there was a conflict. And she was determined to succeed, though it struck her that she might be able to get out of the situation without fighting. She wasn't really fond of the thought of having to fight him, mostly because the guard earlier was nagging at her mind, and because she was tired.

So she pushed herself up, and looked straight and firmly at him. "Who are you?" she asked. His left eye twitched. They were silent for a few seconds before Erza decided to ask again; "I asked, who are you?" she asked in a rather demanding and impatient way. She wasn't fond of asking twice, and especially not when it was to someone from a dark-guild.

She didn't really have time to worry about that however, as she felt the same shock-wave she had felt earlier, and it was clearly erupting from the ghastly man in front of her. After quickly recovering, she noticed how his eyes had changed. Whereas they had been dead before, they were now fuelled by rage for no apparent reason.

Whatever hopes Erza had of handling the man without fighting him vanished in that instant, as the man ran at her with his fists raised. She inadvertently smiled at him as he ran towards her, without any weapons to repel the sword she had in her hand. The last time someone had tried to fight her barehanded, it had ended very poorly. For the opposite party of course.

When he first entered her range, she swung her sword in a wide arch with the flat side of the sword in the hopes of merely knocking him out, as slicing him in two pieces was the last thing she wanted to do. However in retrospect, she figured she should have thrown all care to the wind, because what ended up happening was the man dodging the rather slow moving blade and planting his left hand on her sword arm.

The instant his hand planted itself on her skin, her arm began to spasm uncontrollably, forcing her to drop her sword. She instinctively pushed herself away from him with her functioning hand, stumbling backwards though she still remained standing.

Her eyes darted back and forth between the man and the arm, where the area affected by whatever the man had done was starting to grow rapidly. She could feel as it crept up her arm, through her shoulder, to her neck, and when it finally hit her head, she dropped to her knees.

It was deafening but silent. It was all consuming but none taking. The sensation in her mind wrapped her entire being into one feeling. Pain. A cry escaped from her lips, as a couple of eyes looked away from her, twitching.

And then it stopped. Her mind was clear again, the pain was gone, the only thing there to document the thing that had just transpired was the echo of her scream, resounding in the hall. She looked back up at the man. He was looking away from her... All the rage that had been there just moment ago seemed to have vanished and been replaced with... guilt? Erza shook her head and stood up.

"Erza!?" Gray yelled and he ran into the room from one of the large hallways. He was panting slightly as he ran over to her.

"Gray..?" Erza said in a low tone, still slightly dazed.

"I felt that pulse again and I heard you scream... are you alright? What happened?" he asked. The response he received was a finger pointing towards a person he had not noticed. "Who are you?!" he shouted at the person. The instant he yelled it, the man fixated his gaze on him, though Erza quickly noticed how the reaction was different.

His left-eye twitched again, as had happened previously, though this time he began shaking mildly. It grew more violent as his eyes was slowly filled with tears, slowly tracking their way down his pale cheek, only to fall off his chin. He opened his mouth, just to close it again. With, what looked like an immense force, he opened his mouth again, saying two barely audible words; "I... I'm not..."

Erza was just as perturbed as Gray, maybe even more so.

"Wh-what's wrong with him?" Gray asked Erza, hoping that she would have an answer to what exactly was going on, but of course she wouldn't have.

"I have no idea," she said, "suddenly he just attacked me after I asked who he was..." originally she had planned to say that he probably wouldn't be of any harm, though she had, rather painfully, realized how wrong the statement was.

"What to do we do about him?" Gray asked.

"I don't know..." Erza said, looking away from the man who was now on his knees crying for seemingly no reason. Her eyes caught one of the dark-guild members trying to crawl out of the room while they were preoccupied. It was the one she had 'taken care of' as the last before the other had fled.

She walked over to him and placed her foot on his back, rendering him unable to crawl any further. "Where do you think you're going?" she said with a scowl on her face.

The man yelped slightly, though quickly calmed himself. If he was going to get out of the situation with his skin intact, he would have to comply... It wasn't his fight anyway, Erigor was the one with the grudge, though that didn't mean that he wouldn't have enjoyed seeing them die. "No-where," he said briefly.

"Good... now, who i-..." Erza stopped herself. She reminded herself of her priorities before continuing. "What exactly was your plan?" she 'asked' him while pressing her foot harder into his back.

"We were planning to take Lullaby and play it at the general assembly, supposedly killing all of the guild masters." As soon as he had said that he felt a terrible aura of death and darkness come from just behind him, accompanied with a foot planted very securely in his back.

"Oi, Erza, ask him about the **wind-wall**," Gray added from the side lines.

"What **wind-wall**?" Erza muttered, turning her attention towards the large windows. It looked like they were in the middle of a tornado from what she could see. She looked back down at the person beneath her foot, waiting for an answer, though it became apparent that it was not his best of intentions to answer, so she pressed her foot down again, "You heard him," she said commandingly.

"Right, right, lay off, damn it," he said, trying to straighten his back. "One of our members, Kage, is able to dispel it. Find him and you'll be able to get out... Of course you could also ask him," he said, motioning his head towards the person that had just recently been crying, who was now standing up without a sign of sadness on his face, except for the trail of tears that had yet to fall off his skin.

"What's his deal anyway?" Gray asked.

"Well... we don't really know. He doesn't speak, at all... we only _found _him recently, and he just sorted of tagged along," he explained. A grin appeared on his face. It would probably have been bigger if he was able to see the slight frowns on their faces, though he could make due without. "However," he started, catching their attention again, "there is one thing we know about him," he said, revelling in their impatience. He didn't revel in the foot that was in his back though.

"Well?"

He took a deep breath before starting. "He absolutely despises humans. Anyone who has ever attempted to speak with him was met with silence and anyone who have tried to touch him was repelled by some form of pain. You felt it yourself, didn't you?" he said with a rather devious grin on his face. He wasn't lying. He was just telling his version of the truth, in a rather cunning way. At least that was what he would tell you. He just needed them to switch their attention towards the other person so he would be able to escape and take care of Kageyama before they could get him to dispel the wall. It was a simple plan, but it seemed to be working.

While Gray believed what he had just said to be true, maybe not to that extent as he had just heard him speak, Erza's thoughts were in disarray. To her, the man didn't feel like he hated them. It might have been that he had attacked her, and succeeded at that, it almost felt like it was herself that had provoked it, albeit she couldn't for the life of her figure out what exactly had caused him to attack her. It seemed quite obvious that he had attacked because of her question, but his reaction had been completely different when Gray had asked the exact same thing.

She figured there was no point thinking about it, because no matter how you looked at it, the one below her foot was obviously trying to draw attention away from himself, and because the person was an enigma, no matter how you looked at it.

"You really should worry about him more than me... who knows what he mi-..." He was cut off as a violent explosion shook the ground.

"That must be Natsu," Gray said. "He's probably tearing this whole place down"

Erza nodded. "We'd best hurry up here," she said, smacking the man below her in the back of his head, rendering him unconscious. She then turned towards the one with the grey hair. It was no use talking to him, that much she had established at this point. They could bring him with them, however he seemed to be quite unpredictable, if not down right dangerous. Though on the other hand, the person had stated that he might be able to deal with the wall, granted that had probably been nothing more than petty assumptions, however there might have been a grain of truth in it.

She shook her head. Kageyama would be able to get them out of there, so he was the safest bet. "We're going Gray," Erza said, waving her arm for him to tag along as she went towards one of the hallways where the explosion had come from.

"What about him?"

"I think it'd be best if we left him. He doesn't seem to be a member of Eisenwald, so we don't really have any business with him," she explained whilst rubbing the place where he had touched her arm.

"Okay I guess," he said, running up to her, and as soon as he was by her side she set into run as well down the corridor. Gray took a last look over his shoulder towards the hall. He couldn't see him.

They manoeuvred through the station, quickly finding Natsu standing in front of a downed black-haired mage. Lucy was standing somewhere in the background, watching Natsu with a drop of sweat running down her face.

"Natsu, do you know his name?" Erza quickly asked him.

Natsu scratched the back of his head, looking at her with confusion in his eyes. "His name? Why would you want to kn-..."

"Just tell me," Erza commanded.

"Ha-Hai!" Natsu squeaked, "I think he was shouting 'I'm Kageyame, fear me' very angrily at me earlier."

Erza nodded and moved over to the half-conscious mage, asking; "You can dispel the **wind-wall**, right?"

The mage's eyelids wavered slightly before answering. "What of it?" he coughed.

"I take that as a yes. Natsu, Gray, help me carry him," Erza said.

"Wait, who said I was going to do anything?!" Kageyama exclaimed, suddenly a lot more awake that previously.

"I said that," Erza said rather threateningly with her typical scowl on her face..

"R-right," he stammered. It probably wasn't the best decision to anger her any further if he wanted to, well, remain alive, that is.

Subsequently after the short conversation, he had been dragged out in front of the station. It was a loud gale, though their voices still remained audible. Natsu and Gray who had been dragging Kageyama halfway outside, until he had abruptly protested and declared that he wouldn't run away if they let him walk by himself, was walking ominously behind the shadow-mage. He looked at the wall of concentrated air and with a frown on his face he turned around again.

"I don't think I'm able to dispel it... I'm too exhausted after the fight with pink-head over there to be able to remove it properly," he explained.

"Well, do it improperly then, we don't have time to wait," Erza demanded.

"Do you know what happens if I try to do that," he asked rhetorically. They remained silent. "Idiots... if I try to dispel magic without my full reserve, the magic will blow up and the explosion is proportional to the power of the spell..." he said, turning around to face the **wind-wall**. "How big do you think the it'll be?" he said with a grin.

"Fine, we get it. How long until you are able to do it?" Erza asked, crossing her arms.

"Well, I don't know. It depends on how much you're willing to pay me," he said, turning around again with a mischievous smile crossing his face.

Erza's patience had already been wearing thin, and it was at the breaking point. She stepped towards him, her scowl deepening and her arm reaching for the hilt of her sword.

Kageyama backed off, raising his hands in front of him. "Woah woah woah, remember, I'm your ticket out of here, right?" It had only been a few moments before he realized that he was in an advantageous position, and he was not going to just give them what they wanted before getting something for himself.

Erza's fist clenched in response. He was right, and she couldn't do anything about it...

"Uhm... who's that?" Lucy asked out of no-where. She was of course referring to a person with quite memorable long grey hair, whom had just seemingly appeared just as spontaneously as her question. He was standing over by between two of the pillars, facing the wall. Hearing her voice he turned around and stared at her with eyes that made her feel quite uneasy.

"It's him again," Gray muttered, whilst Natsu shot him a curious look.

"Who?"

"Well... it's hard to describe," Gray said, trying to brush it off, though Natsu was persistent. Like he always was.

"We don't have anything else to do," he noted, irritating Gray by his accurate depiction of their current situation.

"Wait... didn't that guy say something about him being able to get us out?" Gray asked Erza who was thinking along the exact same lines.

"He did say that," she stated.

Kageyama was silently cursing inside his head. If what he recalled was something that could be recreated under these situations, he wasn't in a good position any more. Though the minute he would object, they would realize that he was lying and was in fact useless to them, meaning that his little extortion would come back and bite him in the ass. Basically, he was in a bind.

"We just have to ask him then, don't we?" Natsu asked.

"Well yeah, but it's not tha-..."

"Hey, you! Can you break the wall for us?" Natsu shouted at the man. The man titled his head slightly, while pointing a finger at himself. Natsu shrugged the rather weird gesture off and nodded.

The man shrugged and turned around, facing the **wind-wall**, walking closer towards it.

"Don't do that, it's dangerous!" Kageyama shouted, trying to save his own skin more than the man's, however he didn't need to save anything, as he simply stuck his hand into the wall. It went straight through the wall, which almost immediately began to enter a state of entropy. Where the wind had moved as a synonymous unity, the hand was filling a space, causing some of the wind to have to move around it, displacing more and more of the wall. It took only a few seconds before it fully dispersed into thin air.

The group stood in utter silence, watching the man as he nonchalantly turned around and recommenced his staring at them.

"That must've been a weak wall," Lucy suggested, laughing slightly whilst scratching her back head.

"We don't have time to worry about that, we have to get to Clover Town before Erigor. We should be able to catch up to him with the four-wheeler, but we have to hurry!" Erza said, while moving towards the place where they had parked the car. Kageyama was slowly trying to etch his way out of any confrontation with, well any of them.

"Don't think I forgot about you!" Erza yelled back at him before exiting the station completely. "If I ever see you in a dark-guild again, I won't be as lenient!" she said as she went out and down the steps. The rest follow her, just after sending a look back at the trembling shadow-mage, who seemed to be quite displeased with the whole situation.

As all of them walked down the steps down into the streets, Natsu went over to the man, who for some inexplicable decided to join them, thinking it was a good idea to commend him on his efforts decided to give him a pat on his shoulder though 'accidentally', unaware of what might happen, grazed the man's skin.

"You know, that was really awesome back ther-..." he was interrupted as his arm started to squirm and then spreading up his arm. In just a few moments, just as with Erza, he was screaming in pain, and then it disappeared again. After the pain had vanished, Natsu looked around, seeing how Lucy was staring at both of them, petrified, Gray seemed to be quite confused, much like Natsu himself, but Erza was looking at him like he was an idiot for some unknown reason. The man was looking away, seeming somewhat remorseful.

"What... was that?" Natsu asked, unable to quite understand what exactly had just happened, and for good reason.

Erza's face suddenly lightened up. "Ah! I forgot to tell you that you should probably stay away from him. Can you forgive me?" she said, grieving over her seemingly non-consequential misstep.

"Seriously... what is up with him?" Gray asked no one in particular. Lucy just stood there, with her eyes flickering between the man and Happy that was so prone to explain things, though she quickly realized that putting her faith into a flying cat might not be the most reliable thing to do.

They continued walking towards the car, though this time Natsu and Lucy was paying special attention to keep a little, if not more of a distance between themselves and the man.

When they eventually reached the car, Erza motioned for the man to stop. "Are you really coming with us?" she asked. He just looked at her with a slightly confused expression, which was clearly asking her why she would even ask in the first place. She sighed and turned around towards the others.

How exactly Lucy came to sit next to the man in the car was a mystery to her. Why was he even with them in the first place? A sigh escaped her. Another thing that had caused her to sigh was how the person had been incessantly staring at her throughout practically from the time they had entered the car. It unnerved her quite a bit, however her ego wasn't suffering a bit from it, though the ego had been temporarily disabled as discomfort had momentarily taken over.

"So... what's your name?" Lucy asked, her voice shaking slight whilst attempting to put up a smile. The man's eye just twitched slightly, and thereafter he had just shaken his head. She couldn't exactly tell whether he was messing with her or just being plain rude, so she just shook it off, turning her attention away from the person that had finally decided to look away from her and begun looking at the canyon area they were entering, towards the person who was had his head out of the window.

The ride was fairly long and silent, with a couple of bumps along the road. Once Lucy had been thrown towards the man, though had managed to stop herself from actually touching him, except for her leg, which to her own surprise still remained fine. She had guessed that it was because there was no actual skin contact.

After that, she had found herself occasionally glancing in his general direction. It was only then, when she had actively looked at him up-close that she had been able to actually see his features. It amazed and shocked her at the same time. He was nothing but skin and bones... She had seen some serious cases of anorexia when she had attended some of the banquets she had been invited to as her fathers daughter, but that was nothing compared to his condition.

Though what really caught her attention was his eyes. If anything, they looked disconnected from reality. Far, far away, gazing upon a world only he knew... They were from different worlds she concluded. It was a shocking view of a world previously hidden from her eyes.

It wasn't like she was blind of the suffering of people, she had just never been able to see it as she had always been wrapped up in the aristocracy, who never gave the light of day to those below them. That was one of the many reasons she had decided to leave, of course it was dwarfed by other reasons, but it was still there, and now after watching him for a longer period of time, she began to feel bad for him.

After a while of driving, Erza suddenly shouted; "I can see him," in between her drawn out breaths of exhaustion. Natsu twitched slightly, suddenly becoming dangerously close to falling out of the car. Happy quickly grabbed on to Natsu's pants and dragged him back into the car Luckily for both of them, he was wearing a belt.

While all that was going on, Gray had managed to crawl out of the window of the car, and crawled onto the roof, where miraculously maintained balance on top of the speeding car. "I'll stop him and then we'll take care of him," Gray shouted down to Erza, whose ragged breathing worried him, however he didn't really have time for that.

Gray made the necessary hand movements before shouting; "**Ice-make: Lance!**" after which several streams of ice propelled from his hands towards Erigor. Unluckily for him it seemed Erigor had heard him, so he managed to do a barrel-roll out of the way.

"Persistent rats!" Erigor shouted, as he turned around and created a magic seal while saying; "**Wind Blade**," with a sadistic grin. A stream of air erupted from the seal, which subsequently knocked Gray off of the car, forcing Erza to stop abruptly, which in turn forced another groan out of Natsu and a yelp from Lucy.

Gray was thrown down on to the railway tracks, tumbling in the trail of dust the car had left behind, hitting several of the wooden planks supporting the two steel bars which he also hit quite a bit. He tumbled for quite a few seconds before finally stopping around twenty meters behind the stopped car.

It didn't take long for Lucy to realize what had just happened, as she quickly opened the door and ran towards Gray. Natsu stumbled out of the car after her, still dizzy after the bumpy car ride. Happy was trying to wake Natsu up, to no avail however. Erza was looking at Erigor as he descended down towards them.

"Is that all you have? Two weaklings, a sickling, a cat and then you, little miss energetic," he said with a hint of sarcasm, his grin growing wider.

"You... won't get away with this," Erza said, her head spinning slightly due to magic exhaustion.

"And how exactly are you going to stop me?" he asked, following it up with a maniacal laughter.

She knew he was right. At this point, their best bet was to wait until Natsu recovered, as Gray's rather slow, at least compared to Erigor's, Ice-make wouldn't be able to stop him. Lucy and Happy were also out of the picture and she, as in herself, was too exhausted to fight him properly...

"You?!" Erigor shouted suddenly. "What are you doing here?!"

While all the commotion had been going on, the grey-haired man had just stepped out of the car, looking rather angrily towards Erigor. A pearl of sweat raced its way down Erigor's face. Who would have thought that such a ghastly person could be so intimidating. He cleared his head and returned the glare.

The man began walking towards Erigor, step by step going closer to him. As he passed by Erza he sent her a reassuring look, something which perturbed her greatly.

"What are you doing?" she asked him as he continued walking. She saw as he shrugged casually.

His hair and robe swayed gently in the wind as he walked towards Erigor, whom was starting to grow quite angry, or at least more so than previously.

"Are you planning to defy me?" Erigor asked him. He stopped walking and looked at him with what seemed like great resolve.

"You... not wrong," he said, taking another step towards. Most of Erigor's anxiety faded away, at least until he opened his mouth again and said; "But, not right either." After saying that, he set into a run towards Erigor, who decided to just fly into the air, out of his reach. The man stopped abruptly in his tracks and looked up at Erigor.

"What? Can't get to me?" he taunted.

The man just stared at him, with a creepy smile crossing his lips.

"Stop staring at me, you freak!" Erigor shouted, just before making a magic seal; "**Wind Blade**" he shouted for the second time, this time directed towards the person standing on the railway.

Erza, as well as Gray, who was leaning up against the car with a hand on his injured shoulder, and Lucy who was helping Happy wake Natsu, neither of them would probably have believed themselves if they were to tell what happened to their younger selves. The man literally jumped up, through the wind magic, basically splitting the wind in half making it seem like it was nothing. Erigor seemed to be in just as much shock as them, so he didn't have enough time, well, he had plenty of time, he just didn't use it, but he failed to react in time, so he was hit straight in the face with a clenched fist of the man.

Erigor was sent flying uncontrollably through the air. The pain he was experiencing was far greater than anything he had ever felt before. The initial punch he would have been able to deal with, but the thing he feared the most, the feeling that instantaneously came after contact, was just as bad as he had imagined. After the incident during his 'recovery' he had made sure to stay well away from him. He hadn't liked his presence in the first place, the reason was that he was a liability, as was pretty obvious at this point, though he didn't really have time to think about that, nor the ability.

While Erigor was still flying in a daze of pain, he felt another impact, this time in his back, and the direction he was travelling altered greatly. Seconds later he crashed into what he presumed to be the railway. He wasn't entirely sure, however after the pain finally subsided after a little while, of course it felt far longer to him.

The onlookers were watching it with amazement, even Natsu who had finally recovered after great efforts from primarily Happy, and Lucy less so. They had seen the initial move, however the follow up was something just as, if not more, spectacular, as the man had seemingly used air as a platform to jump from. He had done that, jumping towards Erigor who was still reeling in the after effects of the punch. He had caught up with him within a second, and had slammed his fist into his back, this time sending him crashing into the railway with quite a substantial amount of force.

After that, the man had jumped on the air once more, this time sending him towards the bridge as well. He landed a couple of meters away from Erigor. He then slowly walked over towards Erigor whom at this point in time was starting to recuperate from the attacks, though unlike with the times Erza and Natsu had been affected by it, the pain didn't subside all at once. It decreased slowly over time, to a point where it was bearable at least.

He was only able to push himself off of the ground, getting a chance to look around. His scythe had been lost at the initial strike and was probably somewhere down at the bottom of the ravine by now. The group at the car were all staring at him with gaping expressions, which was reasonable, as he would probably have the same expression if not for the overwhelming amount of pain he had just been through. And then finally there was the man, slowly approaching him quite ominously. Erigor did not like the situation at all. Especially not the fact that the man was looking down at him, almost as if he was feeling pity for him...

Erigor was petrified, frozen in place. He was telling his body to stand up and ran, though it didn't seem to be responding. He looked up at the man, as he slowly knelt down next to him, extending both of his arms. That moment was probably the longest moment in his life, even though its relative short length, which was around a second. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest. It was loud...

He felt a hand on his temple, and his vision blackened. The sensation that crashed into him, and over him could not be described in any other way, than to die a million times in the course of a second. He felt himself being impaled, burnt, frozen, stabbed, lacerated, eviscerated, decapitated, disembowelled, electrocuted, tortured, the list could go on. He felt his own being disappear countless times, his entire existence vanish from the world... and then suddenly he was back.

He looked around, the memory of his own countless deaths still fresh in his mind, he started to crawl backwards. Away from the man, whom had stood up again, looming dangerously over him. He kept crawling, without a thought, the only thing he could hear was his own heartbeat and his rapid breathing.

He faintly heard a voice call out to him, though it was too late. His hand slipped on the edge of the bridge and he fell backwards, his body flipping over, spinning rapidly as he dropped into the misty chasms of the valley. His mind was filled with the wind and his own heartbeat, and then suddenly, it stopped. Everything stopped.

They watched him plummet into the depths with a synonymous expression on their faces. Shock, primarily. Even after calling out to him, he had backed off the edge of the bridge, and seemingly had not even tried to save himself with his magic...

Lucy was the first to break the silence. "D-did... he die?" she asked, looking at the others with an expression of mixed horror and shock.

"What... do we do?" Gray asked, looking at Erza.

"I... think we should take him to Master... he'll know what's best," she said, still starring intently at the man who was still leaning slightly over the edge of the bridge, looking down into the chasm where Erigor had just fallen down.

Hearing their voices, the man turned to face them. His ashen hair was still swaying gently in the wind, his eyes as dead as the time they met. His pale lips curved down into a frown.

* * *

**Author Notes: Okay, so, just to clear something up. This 'man' is the same one from the Liminoid Illumina arc (It's pretty bloody difficult explaining this when the character doesn't have a name...). Anyhow, in regards to, well, everything, this was the longest chapter so far and it was quite difficult to make it, especially the final part. So yeah, Erigor kind of died. t'is a shame (said no one in particular), Lullaby is of course gone with him down into the cavern, the reason why Natsu was not flown by Happy was because his sense of urgency was thrown off because of the little tap he gave OC (I'll just refer to him as OC from now one, until he gets a proper name). Some other things, the reason why Erza's defenses were broken through was because she was a) exhausted and b) not actually trying to harm him c) not expecting that. **

**There are a lot of other things that I'd like to note on, but I can't really be bothered with it, as they may or may not be obvious, however there were some key points that I'd just like to clarify. **

**Anyway, I hope you stay tuned to the next chapter, where OC will encounter Makarov, and things will happen! **

**And remember, a review a day keeps laziness away. **

**Wind-wall.**


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